Pyrite
by Gleam
Summary: Across the Pacific, the Matteson conglomerate discovered the Midnight Hour and conducted its own experiments with its properties. Now, their scion arrives in Japan to negotiate with an old partner: Kirijo. A Persona 3 AU, where nothing is quite the same.
1. Paradiso

**Pyrite**

**Chapter 1: Paradiso**

* * *

The train doors slid shut behind him with a dismal _click_, echoed by his shoe heels a moment later as he paced to the edge of the balcony overlooking Port Island Station. Gideon laced his fingers together and leaned against the railing. His eyes skipped out over the buildings and the bloody draperies hung about them; past the coffins and that horrible great moon hanging in the sky just above.

It might not have boded well, but the first thought to cross his normally stoic mind upon gazing at his new city was ". . . _transitory_."

But then few things weren't, and he laughed, shook his head, and deposited his discreet music player into his vest pocket. It was a nice night to walk and listen to the moon. Perhaps she'd have more than usual to say tonight. Certainly, the populace wouldn't. Not within the witching hour.

His new abode was a dorm set aside from the others for no reason he could immediately determine - the neighborhoods in the area weren't bad enough to warrant navigating around them, and no affiliation was posted. Only a sign noting "KIRIJO DORM" informed him that he had, in fact, reached his destination. With a helpless shrug, Gideon slipped inside, noting the unlocked door and taking some faint hope from it, despite the warnings of his depressingly-accurate intuition.

The girl inside, halfway across the open lobby, immediately validated his hunch, because openly-displayed thigh holsters were a sign that the law of the jungle had taken the reins from society for the moment. Her head had swung around the moment the door had opened, and her stare reminded him of a wounded bird's; frightened and vicious, all adrenaline and electricity. Gideon had always been blessed with a formidable stare, and apparently that tipped the scales, because her hand darted for the holster with more agility than he'd have credited her with.

Then a voice barked "Takeba!" and the girl flinched reflexively, before glancing back at the stairs in the back corner of the room. Another woman descended the stairs - no girl, from the confidence in her step and the lash of command in her voice. A split second of indecision passed, and then the witching hour ended before his eyes.

As the palettes of the room washed out their greenish shades and returned to a more comforting brown scheme, the newcomer folded her arms and regarded Gideon with an intimidating gaze. "We weren't expecting you so late." she said rather plainly in English, a statement somewhere between recrimination and apology. "I'm Mitsuru Kirijo, a student living in this dorm."

Her eyes flicked over him once with mathematical precision. He knew what she saw - a young man standing comfortably in a black silk outfit, understated gold cuffs on either wrist and a face cut faintly with amusement. Gideon's family did not believe in making anything less than the best impression possible. It was a sentiment he agreed with, and while it marked him out clearly from the crowds he had been forced to navigate through since coming to Japan, the space it granted him in turn was gratifying.

"Gideon Matteson." He responded in like fashion with an acknowledging nod, appreciating the courtesy of a greeting in his own language and culture. It wasn't something he had encountered much yet, despite the assurances of the exchange counselor. "My apologies for arriving late - there was a problem when I disembarked the train and it delayed me a short time."

To be precise, the witching hour had shorted the train doors, and despite their obvious ability to remain cognizant during it, he had no intention of bringing up such a subject so soon in an introduction - particularly one between two heirs such as this.

Kirijo's gaze weighed him for a moment, then flicked over to the Takeba girl, who had yet to calm down. Gideon couldn't honestly blame her. The witching hour was as bad as it got.

"This is Takeba Yukari." Kirijo said, switching over to Japanese for the girl's benefit, although she lacked the blank look of incomprehension that usually appeared on a person's face when they were confronted with an unlearned language. "She lives here too - she's a junior at Gekkoukan."

Perhaps the mundane nature of the conversation soothed her nerves - Takeba's hand drifted away from the holster and she graced him with an awkward smile. "Hey." She said, uncomfortably.

Gideon's amused trebled. A jagged look of amusement flicked over his face and was gone. "Howdy there, Takeba-san. You have my name already?" he greeted amiably, and watched her blink at the sudden, rustic twang of his accent, straightening in confusion - and losing any hint of nerves in her incredulity. Kirijo's brows arched as well, although she didn't comment on it. He returned the courtesy by not asking about the identical pistol strapped to her own thigh. It was alarming that neither of them had any obvious safeties, although he couldn't exactly make sure without seeming gauche, considering their location. He made a note to ask circumspectly later.

More importantly, though . . . "Forgive me, but am I in quite the right building? Considering the population sample, this probably isn't the boy's dorm." Gideon asked, the backcountry twang vanishing like old lightning.

Takeba exhaled, her mouth quirking in humor. "No, it's . . . sort of complicated. The short explanation is that it's co-ed housing."

Kirijo nodded in agreement. "That's the gist of it. I'll explain more later, but for now it's late enough. Takeba, can you show him to his room?"

The other girl nodded, albeit somewhat reluctantly. Gideon doubted she liked being commandeered as a house guide. It sounded vaguely annoying. "Alright. Matteson-san, if you would follow me?"

Trading a nod with Kirijo, he followed Takeba up a flight of stairs and exited onto the second floor, walking all the way to the end of the hallway. "Here it is." she said, turning to hand him a key. "Try not to lose that - Kirijo-san has to get them replaced personally and that's always a mess . . . any questions?"

He glanced at the key and took it - real brass, an oddball choice. He stored the fact away for later. "Yes." Gideon stated, face straight as the North Star. "But I suspect inane questions will annoy Kirijo-san more than you, so I'll bide my time until the time to strike has come."

Another huff of amusement escaped Takeba, and she relaxed fractionally - as he'd thought, she was more comfortable speaking casually. "You'd be right about that, but I wouldn't recommend testing her . . . but, can I ask you something?"

Without even looking at her, Gideon could sense the quiet gathering of tension again. He wondered if her hand was drifting near to those pistols the women here so casually wore.

"Did . . . something strange happen while you were walking here from the station?" Takeba asked quietly, sounding almost ashamed and yet not - somehow accusing as well.

"You mean the midnight hour - the witching hour." Gideon answered openly, and watched her entire body lock up in fear. It brought a bemused smile to his lips. He loved answering questions like that.

"You . . . know about it too?" Takeba asked, hand now openly on the handle of the weapon, probably to counteract the sour tang of panic he could she flooding in behind her eyes.

Gideon carefully raised his hands before in the universal gesture for patience, stepping back to give her the personal space she probably needed right now. "I do. It's a difficult kind of thing to ignore when your tea suddenly becomes a cup of blood. Tasted horrible."

She stared at him for a moment then reflexively glanced down to her thigh, jerking her hand away when she noticed where it had drifted. "Well - I guess." she said slowly, and grimaced. "Look I'm sorry if I - if I scared you or anything; this thing can't shoot. It just looks like a gun."

Gideon blinked bemusedly. "I suppose that's reassuring." he noted. "We're both exhausted, Takeba-san, and it's long past midnight for the both of us. Let's get some rest and we'll talk about tomorrow."

She tried to offer him an apologetic smile - it came out sickly and strained, and she brushed back at a loose strand of hair as she did. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. I - I guess I'll talk to you later, Matteson-san. Goodnight."

He sketched a partial bow, watching the edge of her mouth quirk tiredly as he did so. "Until another creepy midnight, then. Sleep well, Takeba-san." The glimpse he got of the tension and fear partially leaving her expression as he stepped into his room was worth the theatrics.

The door closed, and Gideon stood for a second, listening to Takeba's footsteps fading away into the hallway, before he sighed and leaned against the door, scrubbing at his forehead with irritation.

"I adore suspicion." he said tiredly.

* * *

Gideon had no luck sleeping - jetlag ensured that effort was pyrrhic at best, leaving him irritated and grouchy. He wasn't sure what hour it was when he wandered down into the lobby to make a cup of coffee, but it wasn't any hour consecrated by God as day. Perhaps it was the smell that woke Kirijo, but when she wandered down the stairs and paused upon seeing him in the lobby, she didn't look entirely surprised.

"Matteson-san." She said nodding to him. Wordlessly, he offered her a cup of the faintly steaming beverage - she glanced at it for a moment, then took it, adding two sugars to sweeten the taste, and quietly breathing in the relaxing scent that had likely marked many mornings for her while the sugar dissolved.

Gideon took a sip of the coffee. A faintly disgruntled look flickered over his face. "This is why I prefer to avoid flights." he said finally. "Jetlag ruins the taste of coffee."

A hint of a smile curved Kirijo's lips. "A problem I have seldom faced, but it does have it's trials."

He nodded, noting mentally that morning seemed to not damp her effortless grace at all. It was admirable, and a bit daunting. Not for the first time he wondered precisely how her father was taking this plan - Gideon's had set forward the proposal, and the elder Kirijo was nothing if not unreadable. He had rarely met anyone with a poker face quite so polished as his own. Perhaps the eye patch helped.

"Kirijo-san . . ." he began, and then stopped as something infinitesimal altered in her expression. Following his intuition, he began again with the English variant - "Miss Kirijo . . ."

Her face relaxed fractionally. Being addressed by a name so close to her father's likely bothered her; Gideon appreciated anew his unlikely gift for intuition. This was going to be difficult enough for the both of them without continually reminding Kirijo of her father.

" . . . I'd prefer to keep things amiable between the two of us - if you like, I'll manufacture an argument and return to the States. None of it would reflect on you or yours - this sort of arrangement is odd even for our respective stations, I'd think."

Kirijo didn't immediately reply - instead she watched the thin tangles of steam rising from her coffee, eyes unreadable. It appeared to be a family trait - the poker face, that is.

"It'd start sooner or later." was her eventual reply. "And your family is the most reasonable choice."

"Economically speaking, perhaps." Gideon noted quietly.

Kirijo turned her head slightly to regard him with one eye. He offered a light shrug and sipped from his coffee - black, and strong enough to kill passing geese.

"It's a better option than many others." She finally admitted, a real expression crossing her face at last - distaste. For what, he couldn't say. He hoped it wasn't his coffee. Kirijo took another sip from her mug and turned to look at him evenly. "I prefer to be called Mitsuru."

"Miss Mitsuru, then." Gideon replied. He closed his eyes for a moment, then swallowed the rest of his coffee with a single gulp. He got it all down, although he paid for it in dignity as it burned his throat and he winced.

Mitsuru arched an eyebrow at him. He grimaced and raised a hand in surrender.

"Try not to do that." She said, amused, and Gideon acquiesced.

When Yukari came downstairs it was approaching something like actual daylight and Gideon had already prepared a light breakfast - the dorm was somewhat lacking in comestibles, but toast and eggs would only be beyond his skills when chickens finally became extinct. Following the scent of food, she wandered into the small kitchen and paused as she found Gideon and Mitsuru conversing quietly. "Good morning." She offered, glancing at the food. There was another three plates laid out and she was fairly certain no one from outside the dorm was coming in this morning. "Mitsuru-sempai, did you . . . "

Mitsuru shook her head. "Matteson-san did the cooking."

Takeba glanced over at Gideon, who raised a hand in greeting. "I confess, Takeba-san." he said gravely. "The pangs of hunger were too great for one such as I, and innocent beings suffered for my appetite. I pray their spirits find peace in the afterlife, for my stomach certainly found it in theirs."

A burst of laughter abruptly escaped the girl, and she shook her head, grinning, as she took a portion onto her plate and sat across from him. "Good morning to you too, Matteson-san." She took a bite of eggs and smiled in simple pleasure. It was a radiant expression on her face, and transformed her from merely pretty into beautiful. "Mm, and it's good cooking too."

Gideon nodded soberly. "No less to honor the brave chicken's sacrifice."

He paused.

"Bawk-bawk." he added gravely.

Takeba laughed again, and even Mitsuru smiled.

Akihiko treaded into the kitchen not long after Takeba - unlike her, he went straight for the eggs with only a mild wave to acknowledge the existence of others, which merited a mild eye-roll from the girl in question. Gideon regarded the white-haired man currently wolfing down his eggs with a neutral expression, perhaps the same one reserved for foxes who parked themselves near henhouses.

"Akihiko." Mitsuru said flatly. The other man jerked reflexively at the tone of command, and glanced over atthe table. His eyebrows raised when he noticed Gideon. Or maybe it was just the fact that he was sitting next to Mitsuru. Whichever.

It was plain to see that the other man had just finished a workout of some kind - his arms still glistened lightly with sweat - so Gideon skipped most of the formalities and just raised a hand in greeting. "Matteson Gideon. I'll be joining this dorm and Gekkokan in general."

"Good to meet you, Gideon-san." Akihiko replied easily, tearing through his breakfast at a rate that made the foreigner blink in surprise. "You're in my year, right?"

" . . . Yes." Gideon answered. "A bit foolish to switch countries and schools for my senior year, perhaps, but fortune falls where it may. You box?"

Akihiko glanced up, frowning faintly. "How'd you know?"

Gideon gave a thin smile. "Bandages on your head."

Akihiko snorted in amusement and took his dishes to the sink, washing them promptly, which earned him bonus points in Gideon's book. Takeba shook her head, a smile more or less permanently etched on her face since she sat down at the table that morning. "You two will get along just fine." she predicted.

"I suspect as much." Gideon replied and glanced at the clock warily. While it wasn't near to time to go, he had already shown up late last night, and he had no desire to repeat the experience.

"Don't worry." Takeba said, correctly interpreting his glance and its meaning, "we've got an hour to go before school opens this morning. And it's only a five-minute walk, in any case."

"However, for me it's time I need to set the environment for my speech." Mitsuru said, as she carried her plates to the sink. Akihiko took them, receiving a nod of gratitude, and the Kirijo heir gracefully walked over to where she'd set her purse. "Matteson-san, I hope your first day finds you suitably welcomed to Gekkokan."

Gideon raised one brow as Mitsuru walked out of the kitchen; it was just a hypothesis at this point, but the more people she had to concern herself with in a room, the more she seemed to withdraw into the impenetrable confidence of the leader's role. She'd probably not be talkative during school hours.

"You're getting along well with her." Takeba said in a soft tone. He looked at her sharply - was that wonder he heard in the younger woman's voice? "How'd you manage that?"

"Similar circumstances." Gideon answered wryly. Noting the seeds of confusion starting to take root in her expression, he explained, "My family - my father in particular - owns and operates a large number of quarries and refining plants in the States. They do a great deal of business providing the Kirijo group with the raw materials used to produce their products, including some rather rare minerals."

He frowned slightly, folding his hands in front of his face. "You might call my presence here a sounding-out for a vertical merger between our respective corporations."

Takeba blinked at the sudden flood of information. "So - wait - you're here for a business deal with Mitsuru-senpai?"

Gideon smiled grimly. "To be exact, it's more akin to representative negotiation between our factions, because Mitsuru-san's father does not get along with mine." Too much alike, to be exact. "We're the intermediaries."

He took a sip of coffee, having brewed another mug for himself after Takeba stole the last of his previous one. "And that's the gist of it."

Takeba stared at him, and even Akihiko stopped washing dishes to pin him with his gaze.

Then the boxer shrugged. "Eh." he said, and went back to washing dishes. "Too early for this."

* * *

_AN: It was noted to me recently that perhaps a bit of variety would do me good in writing, so I've returned to fanfiction in order to hit the sounding board. I've very rarely written in this style before - hopefully I'll learn a bit more about niche writing techniques like 'dialogue' or 'plot coherency' along the way. I hear they're useful._

_For my older readers, please note this is the Persona 3: FES universe; the plot of the original production is very tangled, and, as usual, I don't plan on explaining a great deal of it. But then, I won't be using much of the original either - starting with the fact I refuse to include the Fool arcana in my story, because it's ridiculous._

_For new readers - howdy. I'll try not to weird you out too much here. _

_-Gleam_


	2. Five Stud Card

**Chapter Two: Five Card Stud**

* * *

Gideon pursed his lips as he stared at the school. It far more resembled a college than any high school he had previously encountered. But then, considering that it was more or less Kirijo's flagship, he hadn't expected anything less.

"Come on, Matteson-san! The class listings are in the west wing of the school!" Takeba called; the ambient chatter suffusing the courtyard nearly drowned her out. He raised a hand in acknowledgement and ambled over to the girl, dodging between small clusters of students. Her expression, while still bright, had taken a slightly manufactured cast. School politics, then. How dull.

"Down that hallway." Takeba said, pointing, although Gideon's sense of direction had already oriented him to his destination. "Can you find your own way then? Good! I've got to go meet up with the rest of the Kyudo club then, Matteson-san. Later."

Without waiting for a response, Takeba trotted off, leaving him behind. Gideon frowned. She wasn't a terribly effective guide.

Bereft of other direction, Gideon headed down the indicated hallway, towards the lump of students gathered in front of a number of large sheets. Parting the crowd easily with a mixture of his unique attire and simple politeness, he read over the listings, and found nothing promising; the only mention of his name was on a small note requesting him to report to the faculty office - which was, of course, in the direction opposite that he had just come.

Successfully repressing the tic in his cheek, Gideon wandered into the somewhat messy office and cleared his throat politely, hoping to garner some measure of attention. The only woman present glanced up and arced an eyebrow at him. "Yes?" she said warningly. "Students aren't supposed to be in this office, you realize."

"Indubitably." Gideon replied evenly. "However, I was requested to report here. I am Matteson Gideon."

Her face was blank with incomprehension for a moment," then she made the connection. "Matteson-san, ah, the new transfer student?"

"Yes," intruded a new voice into the conversation, as a older man stepped into the room from an adjoining office, "And you'd have known that if you had bothered to read his file, Ms. Toriumi."

Promptly ignoring the woman as she flushed in either embarrassment or anger, the senior man turned and bowed to Gideon. "Matteson-san, I am Haibara Ekoda, and I'll be your homeroom teacher this year. Gekkokan is honored to have you."

While he wasn't fond of the way this Mr. Ekoda had stepped on Toriumi-sensei, he couldn't fault his manners in regard to a visiting personage. Perhaps it was an issue of seniority. "It is a privilege, Ekoda-sensei." Gideon replied, bowing at the waist. "Is there any paperwork that needs to be finalized?"

Ekoda flicked his hand dismissively. "It is done. For now there's an assembly - follow me to the auditorium."

Gideon nodded and followed Ekoda to the door, but waited for it to swing closed before glancing over at Toriumi-sensei. He had nothing he could say reassuring in this context, really; the Japanese held a different standard of interaction where student and teacher were involved. He finally settled for " . . . Have a good day, sensei."

He didn't know if it would help, or if she even reacted at all, for Mr. Ekoda was correct - he had an assembly to attend, and delaying any more would be unwise.

* * *

Some public speakers he had listened to had been this bad, but they generally tended to get weeded out by the competent or spared the pain of public embarrassment. Aphorisms did not a speech make - that was a child's trick used for children. Gideon wasn't a child. He wasn't entirely sure about this principal, though. He might well have been short enough.

Rather than spend more time mixing up insults, he leaned back and rubbed his forehead, thinking. He wasn't looking forward to the schoolwork; while his Japanese was more than competent, his mastery was English in its entirety, and reading Japanese continuously could tend to give him headaches. Additionally, he didn't know the slightest bit of Japanese history. He'd have to scramble to keep up with the seniors in that class. At least composition would be a freebie.

Someone poked Gideon in the shoulder. Irritatedly, his head rotated and a glare lanced out from hooded eyes. A younger student paled and turned back to the front, swallowing whatever question he had been about to ask.

Pleased, Gideon returned to his dissection of the principal's character, finding that the oddly bulbous little man might well have a Napoleon complex.

* * *

First days were rarely surprising, but having both Mitsuru and Akihiko in his class was a jarring discovery. Blinking and stepping out of the doorway to let others enter the classroom, Gideon noted, "This is oddly convenient."

Akihiko smirked slightly and indicated the class president with a nod. "Her father more or less funds this school personally. Why are you surprised?"

Gideon's face turned bemused. "I've never funded a high school myself, so I'm a little unfamiliar with the fringe benefits of it."

Akihiko snorted and turned back to the front, waving a hand. "Go talk to Ekoda-sensei and get yourself a seat. Class starts soon."

With a two-fingered salute, Gideon took Akihiko's advice, wandering to the front and pausing by the board, where Mr. Ekoda was busily fiddling with some papers. He acknowledged the foreigner's presence with a nod but little more as students continued to file in. He couldn't help but find a little relief in that. He instinctively didn't trust Mr. Ekoda, and instincts were the strongest genetic gift he had received from his father. They were, to his disbelief, nearly infallible.

"Order!" Mr. Ekoda called, and the class fell silent. "We have a transfer student today, all the way from the US. Matteson-san, if you would introduce yourself?"

Gideon bowed to the class at large. "My name is Matteson Gideon; I'm here in Gekkokan on some business from my father, but I'll be spending this last year here among you all, barring ill luck. I can only hope to benefit the class in what ways I can."

Mr. Ekoda glanced over the class. "Any questions for Matteson-san? Get them out now - you whisper while I'm holding class and I'll have you out of my classroom. You all know my rules."

A brown-haired girl near the back stood up and asked, "Matteson-san? What's your father's business?"

Gideon smiled easily. "Quarrying and mining, mostly. Raw materials."

Another girl stood up, this one black-haired and father fair. He was starting to sense a pattern. Maybe it was all the silk he was wearing. "What part of the United States did you come from?"

"Southern. Near the base of the Appalachians, if you know that mountain range. Tennessee." Gideon answered with a nod.

That'd cause him some problems later on - he wasn't sure if American stereotypes had carried over the ocean or not, buthe saw recognition in a few eyes, and not the good kind. But at least it saved him the trouble of weeding out the kind of people he didn't want to associate with.

"Any others?" Mr. Ekoda asked impatiently. Gideon glanced around the class - most were regarding him with interest, but Mitsuru was avoiding his gaze, almost deliberately. Akihiko appeared attentive, but he might have as well been comatose for all the reaction he was giving out.

Finally another person stood up; a guy, this time. He fixed a somewhat hostile gaze on Gideon and asked, "Why aren't you wearing the school uniform?"

Gideon spread his hands slightly, bemused. "It was deemed acceptable."

"Indeed." Mr. Ekoda said, his flat gaze punching a hole right through the student's head and the wall behind it. Gideon suppressed the urge to wince as the student sat down. It had been an honest question, after all.

"If that's all for now; I have a class to teach." Mr Ekoda continued. "Matteson-san, there is a seat available behind Akihiko. Take it, if you would, and I'll get started."

Gideon nodded pleasantly and took the seat, trading sharp smiles with Akihiko. He noted that Mitsuru was two seats to his right; he wondered if that, too (and if it was, what the distance implied) was arranged.

"Suck-up." the student behind him muttered.

Gideon gave him a friendly smile and otherwise ignored him.

* * *

"Ekoda-sensei is _nice_ to you. Your family must have some pull." Akihiko said, as class dismissed for the day. Students left the classroom in a hurry after old friends or after food or whatever it was that kids chased when released from their pens. He wasn't familiar with the exact dynamics and didn't care to expend the energy necessary to find out.

"He's desperate for other 'civilized' individuals." Gideon replied, amused. "He has a definite superiority complex, but a modicum of pleasantry seems to fulfill his requirements."

"The only other person he's nice to is Mitsuru, and she'd execute him if he wasn't at least civil to her." Akihiko pointed out. "You're pretty much it."

"Desperate men react well to water." Gideon replied, smiling. Akihiko shot him a faintly bewildered look, but finally shook his head, letting his lips quirk again. He didn't comment.

The student behind Gideon, still packing up his notes, was a lot less tactful in his assessment. "You're weird, dude."

Gideon turned and tilted his head at an angle, still cheerful. "You are, sir?"

"Honda Tadakatsu." the student answered, meeting Gideon's gaze straight on, with more than a hint of unfriendliness. His uniform was slightly frayed in a few areas; elbows, mostly. It was probably Gideon's evident affluence that offended him. Envy was always a terribly difficult thing to soothe.

"Pleased to meet you." Gideon said directly, and offered him his hand. Honda glanced at it, stared him down for a few seconds, then grudgingly shook it, returning to his packing with a slightly less violent frown on his face.

Acknowledgement usually helped with this sort of thing, he'd discovered. He turned back to find Akihiko watching him, his face unreadable, and shrugged, smiling.

Akihiko snorted, and they packed up their things and left together.

* * *

Akihiko showed him the gym where he did most of his training; Gideon was pleased to note that the Japanese young man had taken a liking to him. For all that Akihiko carried the pretense of elitism, he seemed to have a preference for the simpler nature of people like, say, Honda back in the classroom. His exacting speech seemed more a quirk of education than real arrogance.

Unfortunately, Gideon was _not _a boxer, so when Akihiko invited him into the ring for a round or two he got his tail beat all over the place. He was durable, but didn't have the instinctive duck-'n-weave boxers trained so hard to learn. He came out bruised but laughing.

When the two of them ambled back into the dorm that evening, Gideon's infectious good mood permeating them both, Mitsuru raised an eyebrow from her seat on a lounge couch.

"Akihiko." she said, with a voice flavored with amusement. "I wasn't expecting you back so late."

The other man flicked his hand. "I tried to show Matteson how to box. He was horrible."

Mitsuru's gaze touched upon the slight limp Gideon had picked up on the way back to the dorm, and her eyes narrowed. "Voluntarily, I hope."

Akihiko gulped, and Gideon laughed. "I volunteered, yes." the foreigner said, making his way to the small fridge and tossing a bottle of water to Akihiko, who caught it with a nod, and taking one for himself as well. "It was a legendary defeat, I tell you. The gym coach wept at the sight."

Akihiko snickered, drawing another sharp glance from Mitsuru. "He said he's never seen someone so impotent."

Gideon winced at the reminder of the barb. "Come on now, no need to repeat that."

"Fine, fine." Akihiko said, half-grinning, as Mitsuru relaxed back into the couch, apparently having determined no real trouble had taken place.

"Very well then." she agreed. "But if you've already worn yourself out, I expect you to stay in tonight, alright?"

Akihiko frowned. "What?"

Gideon raised his head and inquired peaceably, "Tonight?"

Both Akihiko and Mitsuru froze, which confirmed his suspicion. Everyone in this building was a Witchwalker, or some variant thereof. He took a long draught of water, sighing at the revitalizing taste, and sat down on the couch across from Mitsuru's.

Akihiko recovered relatively well, half-smiling and saying "Yeah, I go to the gym late sometimes too. The coach made me a key awhile ago; he doesn't mind if I use the gear while he's gone."

Gideon made an acknowledging noise, but didn't miss the swift look of gratitude Mitsuru shot Akihiko.

"And on other nights you are like Mitsuru and Takeba, are you not?" Gideon asked gently, and watched tension flow back into their bodies, setting them hard against him. He sighed and nodded; that was confirmation enough.

"Akihiko." Mitsuru said aside to her comrade. "I think he has the potential. He showed up here in the dorm during the Dark Hour."

"_What?_" Akihiko said, turning his head to shoot a confused look at Mitsuru. But his arms relaxed; he'd been about three inches from the stance he'd pounded the living daylights out of Gideon with earlier, which had been a little worrisome, to say the least.

Mitsuru nodded, her gaze focused on Gideon. "You know about it, don't you? The Dark Hour."

Gideon spread his hands his face impassive. "Yes. I call it the witching hour, but I suspect we are referring to the same phenomenon. An hour directly after midnight in Japan's timezone, during which visible light is shunted downwards in the spectrum, liquid becomes a substance analogous to blood, and living humans are encased in what appear to be inmovable coffins. I began experiencing it several years ago."

Akihiko nodded. "It occurs even across the Pacific?"

"Apparently." said Mitsuru, grimly. "How much do you know about it? Or its cause?" Akihiko glanced warily at her, probably because of her sudden temper, but kept silent. It was clear who was the leader here, not that he could blame Akihiko for taking a backseat to Mitsuru. She was . . . focused, in a way few people were.

Gideon shrugged. "I know that non-biological, hostile creatures inhabit it, and they seem to prey specifically on unsheltered humans, which induces a coma-like state in the victim. As far as my observations extend, they seem to be . . . " he frowned.

"I'm sorry, this sounds ridiculous." Gideon said finally. "But . . . they appear to be distillations of particular negative aspects of those who they are created from. Temperamental people attacked by these creatures create extremely aggressive, physically strong . . . spawn, I suppose. Fearful ones create smaller, more agile spawn with oddly-shaped bodies. One particularly . . . amorous . . . individual brought into being an apparently paired creature, like two dancers joined at the waist, which seemed to possess an oddly synchronized, disciplined pattern of behavior."

Mitsuru and Akihiko sat still. Akihiko's eyes had slowly grown more hollow as Gideon went on. Mitsuru herself looked a little ill.

"How do you know this?" she asked directly. There was something seething in her voice, just below the surface. It did not sound friendly.

Gideon closed his eyes. "When the witching hour crossed the ocean, the third shift had just changed with the second at my father's workplace. A great many people possessed the potential, as you call it."

His mouth tightened. "A great many people died in confusion and fear. I don't know what those creatures do, precisely, but it is death as surely as a bullet to the head."

Akihiko winced. Mitsuru nodded slowly. "I see." She seemed to deflate, leaning back against the couch and staring at her hands, folded together in her lap. In that moment, Mitsuru seemed very small. Akihiko glanced over at her, bit his lip, and then continued the questions in her stead.

"What happened after?" he asked slowly, as if dreading the answer.

"The inevitable human response." Gideon replied evenly. "We devised weapons, ways to hurt them, and erased the creatures."

Akihiko blinked, leaning forward. "How?"

Gideon shrugged. "It's nonsensical, but these creatures seem to be individually coded to certain pathos of negativity. Like a string of computer code - but since their code is simply an interpretation, a perspective, it's possible to argue against it given the right tools. Find the antithesis to their thesis, so to speak. And much like the philosophical model . . . "

Gideon smiled thinly. "The result is the erasure of both propositions and the correction of the imbalance."

Akihiko shook his head, his face twisted in confusion, and a faint trace of giddy, giddy hope. "So . . ."

"They perish." Gideon said flatly. "Disappear."

Akihiko stared, flat-out stared, for a moment. "You kill them by talking to them?"

Gideon frowned. "You make it sound so plebian."

* * *

They had adjourned for the night in order to think; quite likely, to also explain to Takeba about the situation. Gideon himself had bowed out for the night, and returned to his room. He wasn't particularly fond of laying his cards out on the table like that, and it didn't help that they had told him _nothing _in turn, which was bad manners par excellence; but honesty was plainly going to be the best policy here, what with the nearly visible vibes of suspicion crawling all over the walls in here. He almost wanted to search his room for cameras or something equally insipid.

But that wouldn't endear him to anyone, so instead he yawned, took a quick fifteen-minute shower, and went to bed. Hopefully Mitsuru would repeat her early morning habits so he would have a chance to talk to her. She had been terribly quiet after his story.

In the quiet of the night, he had to wonder if his father knew, _knew_, that the witching hour existed here as well when he sent Gideon. That a relatively organized group of Witchwalkers already existed here at the fulcrum of the hour. If Mitsuru's father knew as well.

The answer that came readily to mind, of course, was yes. Gideon snorted, and turned over, smiling into his pillow.

Crazy old men.

* * *

_AN: I really dislike the Fool Arcana. It's ridiculous and I won't use it. That said, spiritual context battles are a debate student's wildest dream, and I'll make heavy use of that instead._

_For those of you still confused: basically, Gideon spams Hama._

_Also, to my readers: I said I'd avoid vaguely defined spiritual creatures rending minds asunder, previously. Obviously, I lied. I had to find something to work with._


	3. The Sound of Holy Bells

**Chapter Three: The Sound of Holy Bells**

In the morning, Gideon was in the kitchen, puttering around and humming, when Mitsuru finally descended the stairs, looking more than just tired. She was visibly drained; evidently, she hadn't taken his news well, and had trouble sleeping. That, or she had been out running around last night in the witching hour.

She didn't really seem to want to talk, in any case, so he set a cup of coffee on the bar and busied himself elsewhere so she wouldn't feel pressured. A moment later, a chair squeaked as she presumably sat down at the table behind him.

"Morning." Gideon said quietly.

"Good morning." Mitsuru echoed a moment later. A moment passed as Gideon checked the biscuits in the oven, patiently waiting. She was going to say something, unless he was terribly mistaken, and he needed something to kept him shut up.

"Matteson-san." Mitsuru began, confirming his hunch. "How many casualties were there? In America?"

Gideon paused to take a sip of coffee. "Forty-two observed." he answered neutrally. "Roughly two hundred sixty suspected cases in total, although some could be of natural causes, of course. It's difficult to determine once the subject is comatose."

Mitsuru nodded. She had yet to look up from her mug of coffee, and her fingers had tightened on it enough to whiten her knuckles. Gideon bit his lip and searched for something to say - anything. Levity wouldn't work, not with the terribly sober young woman, and they weren't close enough for him to console her personally. Again he found himself confronted by the Japanese distance. It was frustrating.

"But then, there are no more creatures like that in my home nation anymore." Gideon noted gently, "So no one else will be harmed, I suspect."

Mitsuru glanced up from her coffee, her gaze grim. "So they can be stopped. Completely."

"Induitably." Gideon replied, offering a smile, as the oven timer went off. "Ah! Biscuits!"

A tiny crack appeared in Mitsuru's stone face as the corner of her mouth crept up. "I hadn't suspected you'd be so domestic."

Gideon waved an oven mitt in acceptance of that fact. "Masculinity is nice and all, but I prefer not starving to death. It also helps tremendously when I have the munchies, and I never get cheated at the grocery store. Domesticity has its perks."

Mitsuru's face grew amused. "You don't have someone to cook for you?"

"Sure, but I think I make him cry." Gideon replied, and Mitsuru shook her head, smiling. He placed the tray of biscuits on the counter and warned her "be careful, they're hot," before bustling off to check on the bacon again.

"So this is a typical Southern breakfast?" Mitsuru asked, regarding the biscuits with a critical eye. They weren't quite golden brown and perfect, but they were more than adequate for eating purposes, and firmly away from the 'Burnt' category. The bacon, on the other hand, as Gideon desperately rescued it, was teetering on the edge of that dangerous precipice.

"There's no gravy, so no." Gideon said, smiling faintly. "No Southern start-the-day meal is properly done without gravy. And I refuse to use bacon grease for that purpose."

"Thank you." Mitsuru said, shuddering, which brought a sharp snort of amusement out of her peer.

Akihiko and Takeba came downstairs not long after, punctuated by a prolonged yawn from the younger girl. It appeared as if they'd figured out Gideon's habits by now; in that they didn't seem terribly surprised to be confronted by a ready breakfast when they came downstairs.

"You trying to charm the dorm or something?" Akihiko asked, bemused, as he took his seat beside Mitsuru.

"No." Gideon said, straight-faced. "I've laced the biscuits with arsenic."

Takeba froze, her sleep-addled mind taking the statement at face value for a moment. Mitsuru, halfway through one of the biscuits in question, paused and glanced at it. Her mouth quirked and she deliberately took another bite anyway. Takeba relaxed as she realized it was a joke.

"Oh, so what have you got on the bacon, then?" Akihiko asked, grinning.

"The vengeful spirits of murdered pigs, but that comes standard with 'em." Gideon noted casually, setting a plate of it on the table. Akihiko dug right in, but Takeba turned faintly pale.

"Pigs don't make ghosts!" she cried, her alarm all out of size for the joke, and Gideon abruptly had an awful, awful thought that he had to squeeze out of existence before it could escape his mouth. It wasn't funny to poke at other people's fears, he told himself firmly. And repeatedly. The effectiveness was mild at best.

"No, but they do make good bacon." Gideon replied benignly. "Eat."

Takeba eventually lost the suspicious look and settled down to eating; meanwhile, with characteristic velocity, Akihiko had already demolished his first serving and was moving onto his second. "Not bad, Matteson." he commented.

"Anyone that punches me in the face gets to call me Gideon." the foreigner in question replied, watching Takeba circumspectly. When she choked again, he started giggling helplessly.

"Dignified, you two." Akihiko said through a mouthful of biscuit. Mitsuru sighed.

"Don't talk with your mouth full, Akihiko." she said, annihilating any other witty comments he might have been pining to use.

* * *

The school day fell rather quickly into a rhythm Gideon was familiar with, and he passed through his classes with in a dazed state of bemusement that Akihiko dubbed 'moonwatching'. The Southerner wasn't precisely amused by the pun - it was apparent that the stereotype had, indeed, crossed the ocean - but tolerated it with the tired patience of someone who can't be bothered to invent a comeback.

Mr. Ekoda, similarly, picked up on his state of general disinterest, and capitalized on it to drill him with questions on Japanese classic literature, about which he knew nothing. He'd have been embarrassed if he had requested the transfer to this school system and been caught so unprepared; but considering his state of conscription, Gideon had no compunctions about ignoring Mr. Ekoda's snide remarks.

When school finally let out, Gideon turned and raised an eyebrow at Akihiko. "Favoritism, you say. Of course."

The other senior shook his head. "He does that to everybody." Akihiko said, disagreeing. "He's going to harass you until you shape up and then make a trophy out of you."

"This is not tough love, sad to say." Gideon replied dryly. "For I must confess that I believe whatever Ekoda-sensei loves, sadly, withers and dies like a fly in a steam cooker."

Akihiko blinked.

"I'm sorry, did I say something unkind?" Gideon said, smiling.

"No." Akihiko said, sweeping his notes into his bag with practiced ease. "No, pretty much everybody says that at some point. I'll see you later, Gideon - I've got a few things to do."

Gideon nodded and waved him off - his own materials already secured in a satchel. The foreigner wandered out into the hall and glanced around, faintly irritated. He didn't know anyone else well enough to justify dropping in on them, and more importantly he had already picked up something of a bad reputation - his nationality and attire combining to intimidate almost everyone. A three-foot bubble of space surrounded him in the hall as students flowed around him like schooling fish.

Gideon's eyebrow ticked and he wandered out of the store - there had to be something to do on this confounded island.

There was, in fact, a little haven secreted away in Iwatodai Station. It was an old, eclectic bookstore staffed by an equally aged couple, whom Gideon found comfortingly familiar. He found, of all things, a biography of Rommel, and between that and the surprise tea he had been served while scouring the shelves, his desire for things English had been temporarily sated. He made a note to return soon; Bunkichi and Mitsuko were as afflicted with loneliness as anyone their age, and it was an easy enough thing to soothe.

When he returned to the dorm, though, his eye scanned the lobby thorough the window. He'd never seen Takeba in the evenings, and an older man in a well-fitted suit was conversing easily with Mitsuru, who actually looked friendly. Akihiko was seated nearby and looking much cockier than usual.

Opting for silence, Gideon slipped between the doors, and was spotted instantly by Akihiko. In addition, a little bell chimed where it had been attached to a string over the door, alerting the rest to his presence.

The American smiled amusedly. Simple, yet effective, he supposed.

"Ah, Matteson-san!" the businessman called. "Come and have a seat! We're having a dorm meeting and it wouldn't be complete without you."

Gideon smiled courteously and said, "Of course," seating himself on the spare chair left across from Akihiko. It was an unfortunate position; whoever this man was, he commanded the focus of the dorm members entirely, and their stares buffeted him as soon as he sat down. He had never been fond of being stared at.

"I'm Ikutsuki Shuji, the chairman of Gekkokan here." he said, smiling benignly and leaning back into his seat. So he was under Kirijo's thumb? But the relationship seemed to be inversed if anything. "I just wanted to come and talk with you - compare information, if you will."

"It'd be convenient." Gideon agreed, eyebrows raising with interest. "May I presume that you're aware of the peculiarities of this dorm?"

"Quite so." Ikutsuki confimed, his voice pleased. "That is what I'm here to discuss, in fact."

Takeba glanced between the two of them, smiling at each other, and came to a sudden, horrible realization.

"To start with, you are obviously familiar with the Dark Hour and its inhabitants." Ikutsuki said. "I'm uncertain what methods your contingent used, but here, in Japan, the Kirijo group tested and developed a weapon known as an Evoker." He placed one of the odd, safety-bare sidearms on the table that Takeba and Mitsuru had been wearing on the night of his arrival.

"The name sounds interesting." Gideon said carefully. His own family's methods were dangerous even with their abstract nature and philosophical content. Adding an obvious weapon to the mix didn't reassure him.

"Indeed." Ikutsuki said, nodding. "It draws out something known as a Persona - a sort of alter ego, if you will, consisting of an individual's deepest instincts and feelings. Including, of course, the desire to survive. Via this method, certain persons were selected to defend Japan from the Shadows - what we call the native inhabitants of the Dark Hour."

Gideon folded his hands together, a habit he had picked up in order to repress a number of nervous tics he possessed, including tapping relentlessly. "I see. It suits them, I suppose. We called them Egos."

"From the Freudian term?" Ikutsuki asked, frowning.

"Yes." Gideon replied tonelessly. "Perhaps their behavior differs here, but in America they retained traces of the individual they spawned from. Thus, **impulse** and **instinct**, bereft of **conscience**. Forgive me, but that sounds alarmingly similar to what your Evokers are described as doing."

Ikutsuki paused and leaned back, his forehead wrinkled in thought. To the side, Akihiko and Mitsuru exchanged quick, blank looks, and Takeba had folded her arms around herself. It appeared as if she was about to shiver, but held it back by main stubbornness. Barely visible goose bumps had spread down her arms.

After a moment of time in which Ikutsuki did not speak, Gideon extracted a stick of bubblegum from his front pocket and began to chew it. Into the ominous silence he blew his pink bubble, loud and spherical and incongruous. He heard a huff of quiet laughter, but couldn't tell who it was through the enormous thing he had blown.

By the time he managed to get all of it back into his mouth, the atmosphere had lightened somewhat, and Ikutsuki was smiling faintly.

"It's a valid concern, Gideon." he answered. "I'll have to look into that as soon as I have the time to research it; it's an angle I'd not considered before."

Mitsuru and Akihiko knocked eyes again, this one a look so swift that he barely caught it. Not a whole truth, then, and one his peers were party to. Takeba, on the other hand, was still watching his face intently, and ignoring Ikutsuki for the most part. Did she not know?

"But moving on." the chairman said. "I can't help but think your father sent you here deliberately, Gideon-san; the ties between Matteson and Kirijo, and the twin infestations of Shadow activity, imply that you were sent here to help."

Gideon tried to ignore the older man's deliberate use of his first name. It was a power play, one he had encountered before, that reminded the target of their relative ages and positions. Instead, he focused on the implied request. "It's likely." he agreed shortly.

Ikutsuki smiled, leaning forward for the kill he obviously sensed. "Then . . . Mitsuru, if you would?"

The Kirijo heir pulled a small briefcase from under the table, and placed it atop. She opened it to reveal another Evoker, already in a holster.

"Would you lend us your expertise in Shadow hunting, Gideon-san?" Ikutsuki asked, his smile gleaming just like his glasses, and Gideon found a sudden, terrible urge to kill the man where he sat. He forced it down, and, almost absently, noted the sound of his knuckles popping under the strain.

"I will not use an Evoker, currently." Gideon said, his voice pleasant. "I am unsure as to their exact function and method of operation, and in any case I don't think mixing it with my own family's methods without prior testing would be wise. However, I would be glad to assist you with what skills I brought with me across the Pacific, and I'll happily accept the Evoker for experimental purposes for now - I'll need to test it some before I'm ready to use it."

Ikutsuki nodded, chuckling. "Of course I'd like to oblige you - but we have a terribly limited number of Evokers, and every one of them not carried by the members of this dorm is under constant testing. You understand."

"Yes." Gideon replied, and this time the flatness of his tone cut through the chairman's amusement like a razor. The other man touched his forehead and sighed, gathering his thoughts for a moment.

"I apologize for confronting you like this, Gideon-san." Ikutsuki said, removing his glasses, and polishing them with a handkerchief he pulled from a breast pocket. The change of his tone, and the sudden gravity of his voice, drew the attention of every person in the room with magnetic ease. "You've just moved into a foreign country from what amounts to a combat zone, and, from what I understand, you didn't have a great deal of choice in it."

Gideon nodded once, stiffly.

"I appreciate that it must be difficult for you." Ikutsuki continued, sliding his glasses back on and meeting the American's gaze with a look that read as nothing but honest, and tired. "But we lose people here, every day, to the Shadows. It's an illness known to the public as Apathy Syndrome, and it spreads, uncontrolled, except for what little we can do to slow it. We need all the help we can get."

Halfway through the speech, Gideon had lowered his stare to his hands and closed his eyes. A vicious twist manifested itself at the corner of his mouth. Of course this was selfishness on his part - while he might have had a hard time, this truly was a war, a guerilla war. An enemy that hid in a terrain they could barely penetrate, attacking the populace at will and leaving them little more than living corpses. And the only ones who knew, and could defend the unaware people around them, seemed to be the handful of teenagers in front of him. And they were already doing it, the bestthat they could, without even knowing if victory was a possibility.

And here he was. Wanting a _vacation._

It made him sick of his own cowardice.

"Of course." Gideon said, the words bitter in his mouth, but healing to the acidic pit in his chest. "Of course I'll help, Ikutsuki-san. As much as I can."

A general sigh of relief echoed around the room, as Mitsuru and Akihiko relaxed into the cushions bonelessly, and even Takeba looked drained. He hadn't realized how the tension had quite so affected the others, and cursed himself for his insensitivity.

"That's good." Ikutsuki said, leaning back into his own chair as well. "That's good."

The chairman took a moment to gather his own thoughts, and Gideon didn't interrupt him - for this moment, tired of his own plotting.

"I think it'd be best if we introduced you to the operations side tonight." Ikutsuki said, brow furrowed in thought. "Akihiko, Mitsuru, take Yukari and Gideon to Tartarus and get them grounded. Gideon-san, could you show them the basics of your own branch?"

"Of course." Gideon said, nodding. He had to get his act back together. Failure was no excuse for more failure. No excuse at all.

"I'll leave it to the four of you, then." Ikutsuki said, standing up and offering a smile. It was astonishing, really, how that little cheesy smile lit up the room, and caused little echoes on the faces of the others. "Any questions, Gideon-san?"

Gideon composed himself for a moment. " . . . Yes. How do you determine who has the 'potential' to use an Evoker?"

Ikutsuki peered at him for a moment through glasses that reflected light as finely as any mirror. "It largely has to do with the mental maturity of the subject. Once they pass a certain threshold in stability, and possess the desire to defend themselves, the potential to use a Persona manifests. There are other factors involved, but that seems to be the hard and fast rule. Why?"

"Just curiosity." Gideon replied. "Thank you for your time."

* * *

It was later that night, just before the witching hour, when Gideon heard a knock on his door and opened it to reveal Takeba, as oddly awkward-looking as ever. No, that was incorrect; at school she had possessed a certain level of confidence and certainty, borne of knowing her own place in the chain of high school. Only, here, surrounded by more capable senpais, that knowledge couldn't be anything but a bane.

"You ready, Matteson-senpai?" she asked, peeking into the room. He smiled and turned slightly so that her view would be unobstructed. It was still mainly bare compared to his old room and the wallpaper of old truisms and wisdom he had layered up year after year, and he didn't imagine he'd have time to do the same here.

"I am." Gideon assured her. "Has everyone else already assembled?"

"Pretty much." Takeba said. leaning against the wall beside his door. Her posture screamed 'question' so he kept his mouth shut.

"Matteson-senpai?" she asked. "Are you . . . you know, alright with working with us? You got guilt-tripped pretty hard in there."

The young man nodded, stepping into the hall beside Takeba and closing his door behind him. "I was." Gideon acknowledged. "However, that doesn't relieve me of responsibility. Ikutsuki-san's desire for help doesn't reflect badly on his cause - particularly, in a situation with consequences as dire as this."

He hooked his thumbs into his pockets. "I would be a coward in my own eyes if I helped the people only in my home, and not someone else's." Gideon continued quietly. "I cannot defend only a select few and call it justice. Not if my idle hands let more blood spill."

He cracked a grim half-smile. "Metaphorical as the blood may be in this case."

Takeba looked up at him, and a strange little smile graced her face, the fear finally gone from her features. "You thought about that a lot, didn't you, senpai."

Gideon favored her with an amused look. "I think more or less constantly. Sometimes it's even coherent, you know, Takeba."

She laughed and turned around. "Come on, Matteson-senpai." she called. "Everyone's waiting."

And indeed they were; in they lobby, under the familiar, eerie colors of the witching hour, the tenants of the Kirijo dorm had assembled. Akihiko bore an Evoker on his leg and a pair of what looked like brass knuckles, if brass knuckles were designed to kill bears. Mitsuru had a rapier instead, and its sheathe hung comfortably from her side at a slight angle. Akihiko waved him over as he came in.

"Is everyone prepared?" Mitsuru asked confidently. She was in her element, and no one disrupted her. "Good. We're going to Tartarus, then."

Gideon tilted his head. "I've heard that mentioned twice, but I don't know what you're referring to."

Akihiko snickered. "You'll see."

* * *

Tartarus, of course, turned out to be Gekkokan, except with about three hundred extra floors apparently designed by the Winchester widow.

"The irony." Gideon said bemusedly. "Oh, the irony."

Akihiko nodded absently, not glancing up from where he was fiddling with his bear murderer gloves. "I was a little surprised at first, too."

Gideon started humming Pink Floyd. He couldn't help it.

"Did you have anything like this, Matteson-san?" Takeba said, her eyes twinkling. Now that her pre-action jitters were over, she was almost bouncing on her toes, ready for a fight. He wondered just how much running they expected him to do. He hoped it wasn't much.

"Of a sort." Gideon answered. "Except ours went down instead of up."

"One of the quarries?" Mitsuru inquired, turning to look at Gideon and raising an eyebrow.

"Well guessed." Gideon replied, grinning slightly. "Yes, it was a quarry. We tried to clear it out but that turned out to be somewhat troublesome. We collapsed it instead."

Akihiko turned to look at Tartarus, towering up into the atmosphere. Then he turned back and began to ask, "Hey, Mitsuru -"

"No," Mitsuru said. "No."

Akihiko grinned and walked up to the gate, pushing it to the side with a grunt of effort. "Hard way it is then."

"Why do you sound excited about that?" Gideon wondered absently as he wandered into the lobby of Tartarus. It seemed to be centered around a large golden clock in the middle, into which a shoddy-looking staircase rose, penetrating through where the sixth hour would have been if the face of the clock had not been cracked open. Off to the side, a device like a miniature elevator sat. It was slightly underwhelming, and felt bare.

"Training." Akihiko said simply. Mitsuru released an exasperated sigh.

"Fair enough." Gideon allowed, shooting an amused glance at Mitsuru. "I'll assume the hostiles are inside the enormous clock."

He climbed the steps and passed the boundary between Tartarus and the real world; when his foot touched down on the other side, suddenly, abruptly, the lobby was gone, and he was in a large hallway with two exits. There was no flare of transition or feeling of movement, only a vague sensation of dislocation, as if he had walked into a childhood neighborhood and found a strip mall instead. It was unsettling.

And then Akihiko and Takeba were beside him, with just as little warning.

"That -" Gideon said carefully, "was odd."

"You get used to it." Akihiko said with a shrug.

Gideon frowned and pulled a compass out of a small mapkit he kept on him at all times, in order to counter his blatantly horrible sense of direction - and swore, startled, when the needle erupted out of the glass face and hurled itself at the ceiling, embedding itself an inch deep in the stonelike material. With a muttered oath he brushed glass shards off his silk attire.

"Right." he muttered. "Get used to it."

_::Can you hear me?:: _a voice suddenly intoned right into his ear, and he started yet again.

While Takeba giggled and Akihiko failed at stoicism, Gideon growled and fixed his lapels compulsively, regaining some measure of composure. "Yes." he stated rather flatly. "I have discovered I do not like this place."

There was silence for a moment, and then Mitsuru replied amusedly _::I see::_

"Where are you, by the by?" Gideon asked, and glanced around, mentally grasping the Rhetoric Line and following it back to the lobby, and lacing into her personal cortex. _::-Is this a Persona power as well?-::_

_::-Yes-:: _Mitsuru replied. _::-And it's odd that you can communicate at a distance as well-:: _

Opening the thought channel, she said _::You two, Gideon possesses support capabilities similar to mine, so it'd be pointless for me to hang behind. I'm coming into Tartarus. Make room::_

Gideon stepped into the hallway, carefully checking around a corner, and spotted a large, low-slung black mass with a purple mask. _::Aye::_ he sent. _::Shadow at the first left turn. Anyone who wants to observe, move up::_

Takeba and Akihiko joined him at the corner; absently, Gideon noted that the boxer had removed his shoes somewhere to deaden the sound of his footsteps. Takeba had wrapped some kind of fabric around her shoes that had much the same effect.

On the other hand, he heard Mitsuru's heels clicking the moment she entered Tartarus, and heard them on every step she took until she had joined their little group.

Gideon glanced down at his own shoes ruefully. Loafers. He'd do much the same thing, except on a lower volume.

_::Ready?:: _he sent.

Akihiko exchanged a glance with the other two, and lifted a hand to wave him forward.

The process of Synthesis was largely mental. Gideon pointed at the creature to give himself a directional focus, and then exhaled as he sent out a scanwave. It pinged off the twisted pathos of the creature, startling it; its head shot up and it raised a number of hands that he didn't have time to count, some manifesting directly from its gloomy base. But by then it was too late - the returning wave had told him the thing's pathos, and the driving force of its existence. Cowardly Maya, it was called. Using the fist to brutalize, and running from it in turn. Chariot.

"_**Cowardice, the little death to those that crawl."**_Gideon muttered, and sent the antithesis crashing straight through the Maya in a dull flash of yellow light. There was a sound like a weeping woman, and then it vaporized, the twisted logic binding its thoughts together unraveling into air along with its physical form.

. . . But to anyone unable to follow the Logos that Gideon used, it looked a lot more like the air shuddered and then Gideon fried the Maya with a laser.

"That's it." he said, shrugged, and turned back to the others. "Pretty much just variations on that."

Akihiko nodded, grinning. "I don't see any problems with that." he said. "Any limitations?"

"Some variations are totally immune." Gideon said bluntly. "Others just lose limbs or pieces. I can generally only affect one at a time, and it's a whole lot easier to unbalance or confuse them than to annihilate them. It takes a moment to start up. Also, if I can't keep the order of logic straight in my mind, none of it works at all."

"Oh." Akihiko said, frowning. "Sounds inefficient, actually."

Gideon turned his head to meet Akihiko's eyes head-on.

"Care to verify that?" Gideon said pleasantly.

* * *

"_**Courage to stomp into the grave." **_Gideon hissed, slicing a Magic Hand that had hung back to snipe out of existence with a bar of yellow light. Its compatriots were engaging Akihiko and Mitsuru; an arrow slammed through one's wrist and dissolved it to component molecules. The other was quickly double-teamed and dispatched.

"It's useful, I'll admit." Akihiko called, putting his hands on his knees and panting for breath. Even Mitsuru was leaning against a wall, and Yukari was rubbing her wrists where the bowstring had rebounded against them time and time again.

Gideon shrugged easily. He looked fresh, but the jagged tic under one eye gave away the stress building within him. "Just takes a bit of tactics. You skirmish with the beasts they send forward, and I pick off the ones that hang back."

Mitsuru nodded, her eyes closed. "It does its part." she agreed. "Anything else before we retreat for the night?'

Gideon frowned. The tic beneath his eye made him look wilder than usual, and with his hair mussed from dodging Shadows and the still-spotless suit, he carried the mien of a misplaced madman.

"No." he said. "There are a number of variations on the basic process, but I'm incapable of most of them. I'm rather strictly average when it comes to Logic capability."

Akihiko glanced up, still breathing hard. "So what does a professional look like?"

In response, Gideon rolled his eyes. "Like a fireworks show, mostly. Highly distracting."

"So what?" Akihiko said, a smile creeping onto his face. "Did we just get the spare?"

Gideon didn't answer. Instead, he turned and asked Mitsuru, "Should we evacuate Tartarus for tonight?"

She nodded. "I'd think that'd be wise. Give me a moment to find the access point."

Gideon nodded, glanced around habitually, and did a double-take when he caught the last vapors of Takeba applying some kind of ability to herself via her Persona. In the lingering greenish-blue smoke, he watched her raw, nearly-bleeding wrists lightening from dark purple to a much more natural skin tone.

"What was that?" He asked, befuddled, and Takeba glanced up and smiled, more confidently than she had yet tonight.

"Dia." She explained, probably pleased to have something to show off. "It's a healing spell."

Gideon frowned. He was starting to feel a little weak in comparison to these people. Personas, while intellectually disturbing, seemed to grant a breadth of ability that was otherwise impossible. Certainly, he didn't have the ability to fling energy around the way these people did.

"The access point is the second right on the next left turn." Mitsuru called, already heading down the hallway, heels clicking against the tile. "Let's go."

The trio followed after, and Akihiko and Takeba quickly got into an argument over the merits of training the junior girl in basic hand-to-hand. Takeba maintained that Akihiko just wanted to beat on things during the daylight as well. Their argument faded into background noise as Gideon wandered alongside them, tunelessly humming, and watching Mitsuru as she occasionally shot down a statement from either side.

It was nice, surprisingly.

_::-You should consider having him train you-:: _A voice intruded, and Gideon recognized the thought pattern as Mitsuru's. _::-But I'll leave that up to you. Akihiko can get a little overenthusiastic-::_

_::-Perhaps-:: _Gideon replied_, ::-But if that enthusiasm is what gives him that impossible skill, then I'll have no complaints about learning a little. I'd have been in much more trouble without his protection in there-::_

A lip curved upwards on the visible side of Mitsuru's face. _::-Teamwork. It's what keeps us all relatively safe in here. You'll learn quickly-::_

_::-Thanks, coach-:: _Gideon sent laconically, and was rewarded as Mitsuru laughed out loud. He noted with a smile she was much more relaxed here, among people she could trust - or was it that here, of all places, the name 'Kirijo' no longer existed, and she was simply Mitsuru?

Well, it wasn't his place to ask, yet.

The access point turned out to be an impossibly large emerald set into the floor, surrounded by gold. Gideon smiled at it bemusedly - the thing was probably larger than the Hope diamond, and was much, much clearer than that fabled gem.

"This takes us back?" Gideon asked aloud, poking at the crystal with one foot.

"Yes." Mitsuru said pointedly. "And don't poke at it. It could activate and send you somewhere else entirely."

"Does it charge fare?" he inquired.

Mitsuru ignored Gideon's question - she was becoming wise to his ways, apparently - and drew her Evoker, setting the barrel of the weapon against the gem. She fired, and the sound of tinkling glass filled the air as the hallways of Tartarus dissolved into meaningless swathes of color.

When his senses finally reorganized themselves, Gideon was lying on the floor, wondering why his ribs were sore.

"Wha -" he started to ask, and gasped as a Maya three times the size of any he had seen before loomed up over him with a nasty-looking cleaver held in one hand.

The cleaver came down, and Gideon shrimped to the side, a single, sinuous arch of his body sliding him across the cold marble. The cleaver smashed down and splintered the floor like so much old wood.

Desperately, Gideon blasted the thing with a wave of Rhetoric, muddling its thoughts - and then scrambled to his feet and got the hell away as the Maya staggered. There was _no_ reason for him to stay near anything with a knife that would make mincemeat out of a hippo.

Across the lobby, another Maya, equally enormous, smashed Akihiko across the lobby with an arm and swung its cleaver at Mitsuru's head. Gideon watched, stupefied, as she halted the cleaver by running the arm holding it through at the elbow, and then broke the creature's arm with a vicious twist. Takeba was bounding over, her Evoker already at her head, to Akihiko, who was crumpled against a wall.

A furious, unearthly bellow sounded behind Gideon, and he turned to face the Maya that had attacked him. It had fixated on the boxer.

Gideon snarled and pinged it again, once then twice, quickly. Its head swung around as he rapidly analyzed the data.

It was a Chariot, like the smaller Mayas, but this one was too driven, too settled in its solidity, for him to simply kill - but he had to buy time for Takeba and Akihiko. He started to run to the side and watched its mask jerk to follow him; at that, a streak of genius struck him as his gaze struck the nearly mirror-like floor. Gideon stopped running.

Instead, he launched a spike of horrid purple directly into the Shadow's mask, shouting _**"DANGER!" **_It recoiled before loosing a hideous shriek. It stomped on the ground - and then froze, the mask turning to stare at the ground. After a moment, it started to look up, only to freeze as it saw its reflection move again.

Gideon grinned wildly. The thing had a frog brain.

"I need help!" Mitsuru shouted, savagely tearing another arm off the Maya she was engaged with. The stump wept black liquid, but the beast itself hardly slowed down.

Gideon's hand whipped up to his mapkit, and he drew out the tiny flashlight that came as part and parcel. His thumb hit the on switch, and he threw it skidding against the floor. The beam struck the mirrored floor, and threw a dizzying web of shadows and fractured light across the entire room.

The Maya spun to confront the sudden motions, and Mitsuru fled along the curve of the room, circling around to join the other three. Takeba finished her Dia and Akihiko began to stir; the Shadow crushed the flashlight with a floor-shaking punch, snuffing the lightshow.

He couldn't kill it, but he could certainly hamstring it. Gideon pointed at the ground in front of the Maya, and hissed _**"A lamed mouth is fed nothing."**_

A dull bar of light crashed into the ground and spread along it like a flood, flowing over the hands supporting the bulk of the Maya. A staccato cracking echoed around the chamber as the fingers touched by the river of light were broken and shattered. Screeching, the Shadow buckled, falling to the ground. A red burst of pain lit inside of Gideon's head, and he staggered away from the creature, a strangled cry caught in his throat.

A white blur went across the floor and tackled the crippled Maya. Gideon rubbed frantically at his bloodshot eyes and glanced back up; Akihiko had recovered and promptly set about to beating the thing into bloody pieces as revenge. Mitsuru swept up beside him and kicked the cleaver it had been using to the other side of the room as Takeba put an arrow through the Maya's mask.

In short order, it died.

After a short breather, the trio turned to regard the last Maya, still enthralled by its own reflection, and attempting abortive motions every few seconds or so, only to freeze again. Akihiko laughed when he figured it out.

"It's a cheap trick." Gideon said apologetically. "And it won't work on anything smarter than, oh, a dog."

"It worked admirably, though." Mitsuru observed, drawing her rapier out of a shattered Maya arm. "Will it refocus on us if we hit it?"

"Absolutely." Gideon replied. "Pain is a basic animal reflex."

"Then we'll only get one shot." Akihiko noted, his grin not lessening a whit. "All-Out Attack, then."

"Agreed." Mitsuru said.

"I can work with that." Takeba chimed in.

"What?" Gideon asked.

The trio whirled and charged across the marble floor, slicing the Maya's supporting hands out from under it before it had a chance to react. From there, much akin to the previous Maya, it was nothing but butcher work. Gideon scratched his head and watched. It was fairly brutal, and not very fair.

When the three waded back out of the mess of twitching limbs, Gideon waved and said, "I want a choppy object too sometime so I can help with that."

"Chopp-" Akihiko started, and bent double, cackling with post-battle glee.

"It's less fun than it looks." Takeba assured him, Shadow-substance splattered all the way up to her thighs, grinning hugely.

"Right." Gideon replied, voice dry.

"I'd prefer you work on keeping them separated." Mitsuru murmured, passing by him in a faintly perfume-scented glide. "You seem to be good at that."

Her sheer presence stunned Gideon for a moment; he blinked twice, attempting to regain his composure. "Right." he finally managed. "I'll stick with that."

A fist thudded into his shoulder, knocking him off balance, and then Akihiko passed by, still grinning. "You did alright, new kid."

"Not bad." Takeba added, winking, and jogged off to catch up with the rest of the group.

Gideon glanced aside, face red, smiling so wide his cheeks hurt, wondering what he'd god he'd pleased to have found, in such a bleak place, such strangely kind people.

Looking forward again, grinning, he bellowed, "Wait up!" and ran after the others, who slowed down to let him catch up.

_AN: In the original plotline, the main character is hospitalized following the first full moon attack. Here, they caught the Shadows coming out of the gate, so to speak, instead of Akihiko running into them alone and getting bushwhacked. _

_The power of Logic is revealed, and it ain't pants compared to the beatdown that Akihiko can dispense, or any of the SEES members, really. There's catching up to be done._


	4. Terms of Engagement

**Chapter Four: Terms of Engagement**

"I could find myself getting used to this." Mitsuru said, seating herself at the table with a copy of the morning newspaper. "Are you going to make this a habit?"

"Considering that my role in battling Shadows is to stand a safe distance away and argue with them, I find it might be prudent to seek other forms of job security." Gideon answered smoothly, flipping over the pancakes. "And besides, I saw what Takeba calls breakfast. There's a limit to how healthy dieting can be."

"Mm." Mitsuru murmured. "And yet, she scores nationally in Kyudo."

"I didn't say that limit was constrictive, now did I." Gideon answered dryly. "But with as much running as Tartarus involves, she'll burn calories too quickly. A healthy breakfast will take the edge off the long nights too."

"True enough." Mitsuru acknowledged. "How are you finding Gekkokan?"

The Southerner frowned slightly. "It's a mixed bag. Standardized subjects I have no problem with, but the Japanese History classes are assuming a base of knowledge I just don't possess. I'll be hobbled until I can find some primer books on the subject."

Mitsuru smiled slightly. "It's good to see your pride isn't preventing you from recognizing your weaknesses."

"If I was flawless there'd be statues of me." Gideon said blithely, to his companion's amusement.

"Morning." Takeba yawned, walking into the kitchen. "Ooh, pancakes." The junior girl motored straight to her seat and commenced the destruction of her share. Gideon made a mental note to cook pancakes more often if she liked them that much. A lot of pancake breakfasts just might help balance out her odd diet.

"_Faaaaabulous._" Gideon purred, causing Takeba to break out into giggles. "I have deescovered 'de youn' girl's weekneess."

"Don't talk while I'm eating." she said, pointing her fork at him.

"Isn't that supposed to be the other way around?" Gideon asked, confused.

"Depends on how much air you waste." Akihiko commented as he entered, which put a disgruntled look on the foreigner's face. "Morning, everyone. Takeba, don't eat too many of those pancakes or you'll get sick."

"Don't listen to him! He just wants your pancakes." Gideon stage-whispered, as he checked the refrigerator for anything to drink. "Do we really not have any orange juice?"

"It's rare in Japan." Mitsuru informed him. "What little you'll find is usually imported, since no one has any luck growing it on the mainland."

"That's a crime." Gideon said, frowning. "I'm getting some sent over, then. You may live without it, but I certainly won't. I demand some creature comforts."

Akihiko shook his head, amused. "It'll cost you. Orange juice is expensive." He leaned past the other man, snagged a bottle of milk out of the door, and popped the cap off into the garbage on his way to the seat. Gideon gave him an approving look.

"At least you have some sense." he groused. "All I've seen anyone drink here are those flavored soda-things."

Takeba removed her face from her plate long enough to inquire, "Are you done griping about our nutrition?"

"Would I see your ribs if I pulled your shirt up?" Gideon asked absently, and didn't notice Takeba turning solid red. Ignoring everyone else at the table who stopped to look at him, Gideon pulled up a chair and laid waste to a pair of pancakes.

Finally he stopped and glanced up, vaguely irritated that he was still getting the evil eye. "What?"

"You're a pervert." Takeba said, scowling.

"And you're a skeleton." Gideon replied, bemused. "Let's agree to cure each other through pancakes and violence and be best friends forever."

Akihiko snorted in the middle of drinking his milk and put a hand to his nose, still snickering. Mitsuru just flipped a page in her newspaper, having developed an immunity to Gideon's quirkiness over the last two days. Akihiko had yet to learn the dangers of attempting to ingest anything in the vicinity of the Southerner. Or to care about them, at least.

"I think I would strangle you because you never really seem to be quiet." Takeba said, and smiled widely while she sawed a pancake in half with particular energy.

Gideon eyed her for a moment and then wordlessly decided to wash the dishes. After a long pause, Takeba sniffed in satisfaction and devoured her last pancake, while Mitsuru's newspaper trembled in something vaguely resembling amusement.

"I'm heading to school now." Takeba said, handing her plate to Gideon with a cheery smile. "Have a good day now!"

Gideon, still watching her out of the corner of his eye, just nodded. The junior girl looked satisfied and walked out.

Akihiko's face was red and his jaw was quivering, he was trying so hard not to laugh. Mitsuru's newspaper flipped another page, the pages seeming faintly expectant, if he could really apply such a human adjective to a stack of papers.

"Sometimes my survival instincts are not quite as well honed as they should be." Gideon admitted, and Akihiko gave up the ghost and started to laugh, joined by a low, musical chuckle from Mitsuru.

"At least you can learn." Mitsuru said, taking a dainty bite of pancake.

"A whole lot of your sentences to me start with 'at least', don't they?" Gideon said, his voice droll.

"You have a few areas that need improvement, that is true." Mitsuru murmured with a nod, not looking up from where she was studying the finance section.

Gideon gave the battle up as lost and went back to washing dishes and trading potshots with Akihiko.

* * *

Gideon stretched gingerly, the overworked muscles in his back protesting the motion. He wasn't exactly in shape, and Akihiko had warned him that physical activity was more difficult in the witching hour here - and indeed, motion had been much more strenuous. Likely it was just a result of low oxygen content, as he'd never seen plants in the witching hour anywhere, and they'd manage to acclimate over time. He actually wondered how the innards of Tartarus managed to avoid air stagnation, because he hadn't seen vents either. Ozymandias, the bizarre quarry his own family had been forced to collapse, had ignored a number of natural laws, but that hadn't been one of them. The heavy gases in the air had been poisonous enough that his father had been forced to replace the air filters on their masks after every single trip.

"Gideon." An irrritated voice called, disrupting his train of thought, "Please attempt to at least look like you are paying attention in my class."

"Hai." Gideon replied absently. Shadows didn't have any physical needs that he knew of, such as breathing or eating, which was likely a natural extension of their ethereal state. Something within Tartarus had to grant them motive energy - something immense, considering its apparent power and range, and capable of very fine control.

Furthermore, there were clear differences between the two midnight realms. Ozymandias had been misty and poisonous, yet awful in clarity - great caverns scarred with reddened stalactites like teeth, so wide that they swallowed lamplight in their immensity. And the Egos had been different, so very distinct; there had only been three. Only three to end over two hundred lives in that dank and twisted cavern. Gideon smiled, perversely.

"Gideon." the voice said again, and Gideon glanced up, finally recognizing the figure of Mr. Ekoda as the speaker. The older man offered a baring of teeth that did not resemble a smile. "Ah, how good of you to finally listen. Can you tell me when the Taika reforms were, or can I move on past wasting my time with you?"

"I haven't the slightest concept." Gideon answered, careless and smiling. Ekoda smiled back and scratched something out in the gradebook before him.

Ignorant of the disdain of the class silently creeping around him, Gideon returned to his silent contemplation, and began sketching on the blank piece of paper that had originally been intended for notes. Under his hand, the tower of Tartarus began to appear, one tar-black line at a time.

"You need to at least act like you're paying attention, Gideon." Akihiko said warningly when class ended. He looked unhappy, but on his serious, unexpressive face it looked more like a portent of inevitable and horrible violence.

"Mm." Gideon replied thoughtfully. "This is true. I need to develop new forms of academic camouflage in order to hide my glaring deficiencies from the great evils of the school world."

The boxer stared at him, humorless. "I was serious." he said finally.

"Clearly." Gideon said, smiling. "Thank you for your advice."

Akihiko watched him for a moment longer, snorted harshly, stood up, and left the classroom, his stride quicker than usual. The Southerner watched him leave with the vague, detached smile so characteristic to his face. Gideon knew he'd have to apologize later for dismissing the other man like that; Akihiko seemed to so rarely get close to anyone that those he started to look after had a disproportionate effect on him. Considering that Gideon was part of his dorm now, and nominally under his protection, he had likely passed the 'acquaintance' stage with Akihiko sometime during the previous few days. He wasn't surprised - Akihiko didn't seem to have anyone his own age and gender to relate to.

If he wanted someone to relate to, Gideon was precisely the kind of person he should be avoiding.

A finger poked hard into his shoulder, and Gideon turned around to see Honda scowling at him. "You blow Akihiko-senpai off like that again, and I'll beat you into the ground." the other boy said, flatly, and his finger drove into the Southerner's ribcage again, knocking him back against his desk.

Gideon's eyes caught on the calluses on the boy's knuckles, the odd red band around the center of his hand, and concluded that Honda had to be one of Akihiko's boxer colleagues. His frustration on the first day became a lot clearer; seeing some foreigner waltz in acting like old friends with his senpai would have turned a green burn on in his jealousy. Why wasn't Akihiko talking with this boy, then? Why couldn't they relate?

Honda proked him again, this time much harder, and Gideon felt the beginnings of what would likely be a bruise over one of his ribs. "I was -" Akihiko's colleague started.

"I realize." Gideon said smiling. "Thank you for your advice."

Honda gave him a hostile, flat glare. "I don't know what he saw in you," the boy said point-blank, "but I hope he saw through it." Honda swung his bookbag up onto his shoulder, turned around, and walked out of the classroom without ever glancing back.

A discrete part of Gideon's mind noted with amusement that it was the same direction Akihiko had gone, and labeled the individual as 'predictable'. Another noted out of the corner of his eye that Mr. Ekoda was still fiddling with his papers, but a chill smile had crossed his lips. The other students weren't looking at him either.

Still smiling, Gideon took his half-completed sketch, secured it in his satchel, and left in the opposite direction.

* * *

The Nagasaki Shrine was a very nice place, Gideon decided, sitting on one of the benches that overlooked the children's playground. There were two younger boys there, roughhousing; their cries and shouts of victory echoed over the tiny building all out of proportion for their source. He grinned at a particularly virulent phrase one boy hurled at another, and the thud of impact that followed, and regarded the fortune he had drawn from the oracle.

_Ill luck_, it said. _Keep your friends close today._

Well, he'd already screwed that one up, so he wasn't terribly concerned about any further misfortune. He tossed the slip of paper into a trashcan nearby.

What had turned things around so quickly? When things had gone so well last night? What had changed? Or was it that they had expected him to change after last night's ordeal? To, somehow, become more open, more _something_, than he was already? Had they expected and not gotten, or had he anticipated someone that never was?

Questions, all of them pointless. Gideon leaned back and closed his eyes, enjoying the warmth of the last sunset rays.

Then his cell phone rang. Without looking, Gideon picked it out of his pocket and flipped it open, answering lazily, "Hello."

"We're meeting again tonight at eight." Mitsuru said, her voice as uninflected as ever. He was willing to bet she'd sound the same at a wake as she did during a school speech. "Be there, if you would." _Click_.

Gideon stowed the phone away, and glanced at his watch. It said six thirty. It wouldn't be long before it was time for the meeting. He should be heading back anyway. He glanced once more at the kids, who had moved on to the seesaw and were busy trying to send each other flying off, and stood up. Brushing himself off, the Southerner started down the stairs back into the real world, and absently rubbed where Honda had poked him the second time. It was starting to bruise, a light purplish in color.

* * *

Gideon opened the door to the Kirijo dorm, and saw all the tenants already assembled in the lobby; Takeba and Akihiko in opposing chairs, with Mitsuru at right angles to them. She gestured him over, and Gideon nodded, wandering over and taking a seat in the chair opposite her, reforming the conference square the Gekkokan squad seemed so fond of.

"Howdy." he said pleasantly. "What's the call to action?"

Mitsuru nodded to Akihiko beside her, who just looked neutral; he had a masterful straight face, one worthy of medals in Gideon's opinion. Unfortunately, the sheer blankness of it marked it as a falsehood. "Last night Akihiko proposed giving hand-to-hand training to Takeba. She's decided to, and since you mentioned an interest in it, I thought I should bring you in as well."

"It'd certainly be useful." Gideon said with a faint smile. "I'm ready and willing, Akihiko-senpai."

"Well, we can't do it just yet." Akihiko said, raising a hand to forestall the other man. "I've got a friend at the gym that'll be guiding you two into better shape, on Thursdays and Tuesdays, if you can make it. Once you're able to breathe properly, I'll start stepping in, but I won't have much to teach there; the goal of it would be to make you two more difficult targets, not to teach you to you up in a Shadow's face and punch it."

"It still sounds useful, senpai." Takeba volunteered, earning a smirk from Akihiko.

"Yes. Hopefully it will be useful." he said. "Anything else, Mitsuru?"

The Kirijo heir shook her head. "Not currently. I've got some reports to fill out for the Corporation, so I'll excuse myself. I'll see you all later." Mitsuru stood and walked out of the lobby and the front door. Gideon placidly admired her grace; nothing ever seemed to ruffle her, and yet she handled the others with far more grace than he himself seemed to be capable of mustering. Was it practice? Familiarity? He was getting sick of the repetitious questions but his brain wouldn't stop spitting them out, bite after bite of poisonous envy like hatching spider eggs.

"I'll head out too then." Gideon noted with a smile. "Take care, everyone."

"Will you come Thursday?" Akihiko asked abruptly, when he was halfway to the stairs. Something about the tone told the American that asking had cost Akihiko something - probably pride. As if he had apologized when he had felt he didn't need to, because someone else wouldn't.

Gideon found himself empty of reassuring words, and just uttered the first thing that came to mind. "Of course I will," escaped his mouth before he could critique it, edit it and twist it into a form more aesthetically pleasing to the ear, cleverer and wittier.

"Of course I will." he repeated, and felt like an idiot.

But Akihiko seemed to find something of merit in it, because he nodded and his face softened from the oppressively blank expression he had been wearing before. Takeba smiled and gave him a thumbs-up, calling "Have a good night then!"

Strangely terrified and elated at the same time, Gideon escaped up the stairs to his room, where he closed the door and locked it, his breathing harsher than usual.

_What the hell? _he thought. _What the hell?_

Despite everything else, he slept well that night, better than the nights before it; his dreams empty of tall, grinning figures with scarecrow hands, or the single, bleary image of a body without hands, feet, or a head, laid out on the mauve carpet like a partially opened box that had been thrown away halfway through.

* * *

Saturday dawned. Gideon reflected, amused, on the fact that in America he wouldn't even be awake yet. Yet here he was, in the kitchen at the crack of dawn, attempting to create blueberry muffins without burning them all to a bloody crisp. He noted distantly that it was a losing battle.

When smoke came out of the oven the next time he checked on the muffins, he surrendered to the might of Kitchen Karma and started over with something quick and easy to make: toast and eggs, another American standard. He was aware there were Japanese breakfast meals as well, but he burnt enough of his own culture's food that foreign culinary delights would be completely beyond his talents. Ruefully, he noted that practice would be necessary for homeland ones as well.

Gideon heard her low, vibrant laugh before she entered the kitchen; Mitsuru had probably scented the smoke all the way out in the lobby. "Having trouble?" she asked, sitting at what was fast becoming her usual seat at the table.

"To err is mortal." he answered, grimacing. "I got ahead of myself and tried for some muffins. So much for that."

"I imagine that as long as you continue cooking in the mornings you won't get any complaints on quality." Mitsuru noted with a small smile, flipping out the day's newspaper and scanning through it.

"You're in a good mood." Gideon noticed with a faint grin. "Good news?"

Mitsuru made a absent, flipping motion with her left hand. It was the first time he had seen her gesture with her hands - she must have been very relaxed indeed. "Read." She commanded, handing over the paper and pointing beneath one tiny column. It was a list of names; he glanced up and saw the words 'Apathy Syndrome' and winced. Then he saw the character 'Recovered'.

"What?" Gideon said, his brows beetling down.

"The recoveries started two nights ago, at roughly two A.M." Mitsuru said, her smile entirely satisfied. "Around two hours after we defeated those . . . dual Shadows."

"Good save." Gideon commented, repressing a giddy smile. "How many? Fifteen? I've never heard of someone recovering from a Ego-induced state. How are they doing?"

"Relatively well." Mitsuru answered. "They're groggy, but self-aware and able to answer questions. The initial prognosis is that they'll make a full recovery."

_"Christo." _Gideonmurmured, smiling unabashedly. "And from those little two creatures." He shook his head and stared at the wall. "If those two were conduits -"

"Eggs." Mitsuru reminded Gideon, and he yelped and flipped the eggs out of the skillet before they could burn too.

"As I was saying . . . " Gideon started again after saving what was left of his breakfast, "If those two relatively weak Shadows could contain that many souls, then . . . how many people are afflicted by Apathy Syndrome?"

"Several hundred." Mitsuru said, her smile faltering a bit. Gideon flicked the darkening mood away like a fat fly.

"If those relatively weak and stupid Shadows were composed of fifteen souls, then larger beings would restore dozens of people at once." the Southerner explained. "But more importantly, single beings are limited to being in one place at a time; an army of several hundred Shadows would likely mow us down, but a few powerful Egos can be worn down by attrition and hunted. We won't have to chase down a gang of hiding Shadows - just a few meaner types that are likely to come after us anyway."

Gideon lifted a finger, and slapped it down on the newspaper over the headline that had caused all the fuss. "We've got a target, now."

"Or a trap." Mitsuru warned.

"What defines a trap is knowledge." Gideon countered. "We can choose the time of our engagement, but the foe has the choice of place. They have the advantage of numbers and variety; we have both adaptability, and innovation. For a trap to function there must be bait; and just as a fox can, if we're wise about it, we can leave with the morsel and not the hook. We can, and have, matched our strengths against their weaknesses, and come out the victor."

"And you conclude this all from a total of one engagement?" The Kirijo heir pointed out, and Gideon abruptly shut his mouth. "Leave audacity for when our discipline can match it; boldness without foundation is folly."

He mulled over it for a second. "Agreed." Gideon said reluctantly. "I'm certainly not in shape for such an operation - and I don't know enough to speak for the others either. A trap it is, then."

"But an unintentional one." Mitsuru noted, "Since it was caused by the deaths of two Shadows attacking us."

"So, it's information, and useful at that." Gideon concluded.

"Yes." Mitsuru said, a cool smile playing on \her face. "It is."

A moment of silence passed as Gideon realized he was leaning forward, over the table towards Mitsuru, almost looking eager. With a soft cough, he rearranged himself into his usual posture of vague disinterest - he noted with some distaste he had actually planted his elbow in his toast. A melodious laugh echoed as he tried to blunt the damage with a napkin. He glanced up with irritation, but noted with surprise the faint dusting of red on Mitsuru's cheeks - excitement had evidently extracted its toll on her as well, although perhaps less obviously than butter on the elbow would prove.

"I hadn't realized you could get so passionate." she said, the statement half-apology and half gentle poke.

"It's - it's a rare phenomenon." Gideon admitted. "Not becoming of me."

A faint shade of understanding passed through her eyes. If anyone could comprehend, it would be Mitsuru Kirijo, indeed. She took a sip of her coffee, and said slowly, "I don't believe so . . . not here, at least."

Gideon paused momentarily, then wiped off the last remains of butter from his elbow, and rose to go place the napkin in the trash can.

"Thank you," he said, while his back was turned, but he doubted Mitsuru was much misled by his casual affectation, and she had the grace to accept it without further comment. When he turned back and rejoined her at the table, their conversation remained light, even as the other tenants began to descend the stairs in the back of the lobby.

* * *

School days were beginning to blur for Gideon, as they usually did; he paid little attention in class because he either flawlessly comprehended the subject or, in the case of Mr. Ekoda's material, had no concept of it. Overweening pride may have had something to do with Gideon's apathetic response, but having such a hostile environment didn't help either. At least Akihiko had never brought up the subject again, after their argument yesterday; it was quite likely still sore, and repetition would only deepen the bruise.

In other words, his foulest class showed no signs of change, and Gideon was far from interested in investing the necessary amount of effort to change that. Ekoda could rot.

However, his nonchalance apparently had at least one good benefit - apparently, his outfit, attitude and general foreign nature combined to make him into what one damning whisper termed a 'delinquent'. Gideon found that funny in all manner of ways; us-versus-them mentality at its best. Since it granted him the personal space and solitude he naturally tried to cultivate, the Southerner just let the misconception go forward. Those who mattered would make efforts to see past it, and those too weak to discern truth from popular opinion wouldn't bother him. It was an ideal situation. Of course, when Honda cornered him after class between the bathrooms and the water fountains, that theory went right out the window. Perhaps it was something about the island that dampened Gideon's normally divine intuition?

"Hey." Honda said, scowling. He was shorter than Gideon by about an inch, but made up for it in lean, stringy muscle, the kind that defined the difference between a life athlete and a dabbler in sports. In addition, he had broad shoulders and his sweatsuit on, which gave him the vague appearance of a ticked-off badger. "Did you apologize to Akihiko-senpai."

It was a statement, not a question, and Gideon grimaced uneasily. "No - not really." he admitted bluntly, abandoning his social graces. They didn't seem to help him much here. "He's got this exercise program going for our dorm and I joined up. I don't know if -"

A blur of movement abruptly resolved itself as Honda aborted a punch that Gideon hadn't even seen coming. A cold feeling trickled down the Southerner's neck as the other student faced away and hissed something altogether uncomplimentary. Gideon was no fist-fighter; if it came to blows, he'd be nothing more than sticky paste on the ground afterwards. He hated being reminded constantly of his powerlessness here.

"Look." Honda grated when he finally got his temper under control. "I don't know what the deal is between you two and it's not my business. But you owe senpai an apology for stomping on his kindness. He isn't kind to _nobody_, American. At least return that to him instead of your damn passive-aggressive polite thing."

On instinct, Gideon nearly said 'thank you for your advice' but caught himself in time, reminding himself that antagonizing boxers wasn't a healthy occupation no matter how early you got up in the morning. Instead, he merely said, "Thank you."

Honda eyed him, then snorted and walked off.

Behind him, Gideon scratched his head, mildly frustrated. For all he'd heard of Japanese courtesy, some people here were terrifyingly direct. With a shrug, he scooped up his bag and wandered out of the school to find someplace else to regain some minute fraction of his natural serenity. Unfortunately, his phone rang before he could even reach the gate, and upon seeing the number Gideon resigned himself to another hours-long conversation with that most delightful of all people: Ulysses Rufus Matteson, his father.

* * *

"You look frazzled." Gideon commented, glancing over at Takeba's hair, as the dorm doors opened to permit her passage. It was normally perfectly shaped in some design that must have been fashionable; however, currently it resembled a net of live squirrels. It was not a favorable comparison.

"Something like that." the younger girl answered, wincing, as she sat down in the lobby. "I broke a bow today in Kyudo - put too much strain on it. It's never supposed to happen, even with the dinky little practice bows they give us there."

Gideon frowned. "You fractured the wood of the bow? What pull was it rated for?"

"Forty pounds." Takeba answered, and took a long gulp of Cielo Mist, which made her miss Gideon's eyebrow flying up in unabashed interest before he remembered to calm himself. "I've never experimented with really high-draw bows, but I'll have to now. Even if the one I broke was a crappy old thing . . ."

"Right, you're opening all my pickle jars now." Gideon noted, and Takeba shot him a quick grin before waving to Akihiko as he came in, still lightly coated in sweat from the boxing match he had just returned from. The cool smirk on the other man's face told Gideon exactly who had won. "And here's the victor of the ring tonight."

"Wasn't much of a challenge." Akihiko said, shaking his head. "Other guy was big but had a glass jaw. I battered him for two rounds and dropped him in the third. He had a nasty hook though." The boxer turned his head and exposed a swelling bruise very near the corner of his jaw - it looked like it had come close to dislocating the jaw, but Gideon wasn't familiar enough with medical examination to tell exactly how close.

"Put ice on that." Takeba said flatly, her sudden attitude a far cry from how she usually spoke to her senpais. "Otherwise that bruise will take over your face."

"Don't worry. It's on hostile territory." Gideon said lightly. "Sounds like you both excel at your chosen sport."

Takeba smiled, a hint of pink appearing on her cheeks; on the other hand, Akihiko just cocked an eyebrow and said "Did you expect anything else?"

"Now that you mention it, no." Gideon replied, voice dry.

"Well, it'll be your turn soon enough." Akihiko said, striding over to the kitchen and plundering one of his bottles of mineral water. "Sports clubs start recruiting the second week. You going to join any of them?"

Gideon looked at his tiny arms and wrists, pale from time spent out of the sun. "I can't imagine any of them that I'd particularly excel at." he pointed out.

"Can you swim well?" Takeba offered, hesitant.

"Passably." Gideon answered. "But not well enough for sport of any kind."

"Running?" Akihiko guessed.

"I don't run." Gideon deadpanned. "I powerstroll."

Akihiko snickered while Takeba sat back into her plush chair, frustration plain on her face. "Well, you don't have to join a club, but here in Japan it's pretty much the norm to." she explained. "The only guys not in any clubs are - well, the kind I try not to deal with if I can help it."

The first response that sprang to Gideon's mind was just as unrelentingly sarcastic, but he carefully bit back the impulse and instead offered up "I'll find a club, Takeba-san. It might not be athletic, but I will join one."

She didn't look assuaged, but there was little he was willing to do about it. He had enough tickets to perdition already.

Oddly enough, Mitsuru didn't reappear that night, although Gideon waited until full night had fallen; assuming she must have had important business to attend to, he went upstairs to his room and surrendered to the siren call of sleep, as he'd need to be up early in the morning in order to get breakfast ready for his dormmates.

He dreamed again: a scalpel carved an ugly little man out of wood, and though the little man ran away, the scalpel snipped away until he flew away on the wind, nothing but dust and trimmings and a tiny pile of oaken mouths, their words frozen in their mouths by amber.


	5. Gorgon Mosaic

**Chapter Five: Gorgon Mosaic**

Sunday, apparently, was the only day of the week free of school in Japan, and Gideon blessed that tiny piece of respite with everything in his heart. This didn't prevent him from waking up just as early in the morning, but he did take an extra half-hour to lounge in his room, soaking in the heat of a warm bed and reading from one of his pocket novels.

Eventually he reminded himself that breakfast still had to be prepared; once he made a tradition, he was highly loathe to break it. So Gideon dressed and trudged downstairs to the lobby, where Mitsuru sat, for once inattentive; she didn't even notice his approach until the clang of pot and pan alerted her to the waking of the kitchen. Her head darted up abruptly.

"Morning." Gideon said, as he set the oven to preheat. "Doing well?"

"Fairly." Mitsuru replied without looking up from her newspaper. She didn't add anything else; he took this as a sign she wasn't looking for conversation this morning and kept his silence. After a few minutes, her shoulders, which had so subtly tensed he had never seen it happening, relaxed.

Gideon didn't ask, and Mitsuru didn't offer. He cooked breakfast, and served it, and time passed by.

When she took her leave with a half-empty platitude an hour later, before their dormmates came down, he hoped she had found some level of peace, but she most likely hadn't. It'd have been wrong to ask; all he could hope to do is provide some semblance of safe harbor.

Breakfast proved to be a largely lonely affair, as Akihiko darted out the door with a piece of toast in his mouth, apparently eager to get to training; Takeba, on the other hand, never even stopped, shouting that she was heading out to eat breakfast with her friends.

Gideon glanced at the kitchen table, loaded with uneaten food, sighed, and settled in to eat some himself, so that at least some of it wouldn't go to waste. He couldn't blame them - but, at the same time, he had to admit it was kind of irritating.

Oh well. He had a few experiments he wanted to conduct on the Evoker Mr. Ikutsuki had provided him with, and he had a sneaking suspicion that he would definitely need privacy in order to get anything near conclusive results.

* * *

Back up in his room, Gideon stared at the gun-shaped object before him on the desk - this device, termed an Evoker, was the tool with which the SEES members communicated with their personal Egos, and brought them to battle against the mindless scourge in the heart of Tartarus.

No matter what Mr. Ikutsuki said, Gideon still firmly believed that they were Egos - there were too many similarities. However, perhaps being spawned with only a human donor altered their base psychology to something approaching agreeable. Or perhaps the psychic trauma of being consumed by a Shadow unleashed the Persona within into a blinding, undiscerning rage.

Which brought up an interesting thought - were all Shadows simply unleashed Personas? Where, then, did the seemingly endless hordes within the midnight fortresses come from? Some prior disaster forgotten by mankind?

Gideon dismissed his musings, and disassembled the weapon. It seemed to consist of only a few, very simple parts, which he approved of - simplicity prevented confusion and malfunction. Only a firing mechanism, a small black cube, a crystal, and a small device resembling a tuning fork laid within. The cube appeared to be a buffer between the hammer and the tuning fork. Obviously the tuning fork caused some kind of resonance within the chamber, which was then directed out the barrel by some unknown means.

In fact, it was almost too simple. Did the cube transition kinetic energy into some other form of wave, or was it only a buffer to prevent the fracture of the fork? And what was this crystal? It looked familiar, like some of the elements extracted from the mines his family had worked on. But that would be too convenient - and besides, the hue was wrong. No silvery element could have been harvested in the Appalachians where he had lived, nothing with the purity of this gem.

Gideon slid a plastic glove on from a small box of disposables, and touched the crystal lightly. It hummed loudly and abruptly, vibrating the entire table he had set it on. When his hand jerked back, it stopped, but continued quivering silently, like a drop of water on a hot pan about to boil.

Obviously, whatever it was reacted with human contact, and the Evoker was designed to channel the reaction to the user in controlled amounts - or to amplify the reaction and cause a full-scale manifestation. The second seemed much more likely, as a Persona summoning was nothing if not showy. The echoes of shattering, phantom glass, the cry of a specific technique, the utter focus and stillness required to manipulate the psychic protrusion. Yes, it was an amplifier, thus the presence of the tuning fork.

Carefully, Gideon touched the crystal again. It began vibrating again, a sound like a orchestrated hive of bees, and he felt something knock against the walls of his Logic. With mild surprise, he recognized it as a scanwave - the same sort of technique he himself utilized in analyzing and defeating Shadows. The crystal itself either bonded with its user in order to produce a Persona, or was _intelligent_ in and of itself.

Morbid curiosity compelled him to reply; he was alive these days by the skin of his teeth, and no one knew much about the Shadows and the world they lived in. What he was doing violated a number of the methods of rationality and the scientific process, but the path of Logic had been discovered in little more than fear and violence itself. So he pinged back, the sonar bouncing off a tightly-contained, self-aware entity bound within the crystal.

A second wave gently buffeted him, and Gideon smiled faintly and cracked his walls of Logic just a hair, allowing contact mind to mind in the same fashion as he and Mitsuru had used in the first floor of Tartarus.

**::FLESHLING::** whispered a voice as vile as a rotting moon, and Gideon had time for only a single moment of sickening fear before it dragged him out of the sanctity of his walls and -

_::No_:: he hissed, and twin lances of murder-bright Logic slammed out into the crystal, vanishing into the infinite darkness within, but they startled the beast within long enough for Gideon to escape back within his psychic citadel. His vision greyed with alarming suddenness as his brain attempted to cope with the fugue it had momentarily encountered, crossing stimuli and senses in confusion as it sought some form of order. Gideon ignored it and bashed outward with a modified ping, a solid wave of ironclad Logic meant not to analyze, but defy and rebuff. Simultaneously, his hand darted for the casing of the Evoker, to smash it back down into place and contain the beast within it.

**::I THINK SO::** the sulfurous presence replied, and this time fingers of thought so impossibly strong they crushed Gideon's walls without a hitch seized him and dragged his consciousness within the tiny, spherical crystal in the center of the gun.

From his other hand, the casing dropped from senseless fingers and a body dropped to the floor, slumping over the chair it had been seated in; but the hand on the gemstone remained frozen, halting the body's fall. Awkwardly suspended, it swung back and forth like a hanged man from a noose.

* * *

Gideon's first sense of the realm he had entered came fuzzily, as he had just awoken from a dream. But no life could be had here - where, even as he tried to open eyes he no longer possessed, the scent of fresh blood overwhelmed everything else he could sense.

It made no sense; evacuated from his physical shell, no direct stimuli should exist. But fresh blood he smelled - and felt on his forearms, and wrists, and palms, and fingers; everywhere up to the elbow was drenched in the shadowy crimson substance as if he had plunged both arms into a bath of blood. And he could taste it on his lips - feel it on his face, smeared like clinging mud even into his eyes, stinging and hotly quivering.

And he still couldn't see, despite the incongruous presence of his other senses - or perhaps there was nothing to see at all, here. No light to interpret.

**::quite right:: **said a self-satisfied voice to his right, and Gideon turned but saw nothing still. His Logic, oddly clumsy in this place, told him of a sentience, but he could determine nothing more about it. It was beyond his skills, or it had bound his perception with its own Logic, preventing him from conceiving that there could _be _a presence there beyond that which he felt. And with that, the Logic trap fractured about his mind - but was just as swiftly reinforced, crushing odd thoughts out of Gideon's head and granting him a crushing, pulsating headache.

**::swift in thought, you are, but you should think twice much more often:: **the voice said, and resolved itself a shape he was allowed to perceive - a long, yellow crack like a closed adder's eye. In the center, just barely seen, was a terrifying blackness so far beyond the pitch black around him that Gideon instantly averted his gaze.

From that half-second of perception, he had felt the foundations of his reality quiver beneath a surety and weight of belief that had nearly crushed him. Whatever this was, it was beyond him.

**::wise:: **it said, and he fleetingly gained a perception of amusement.** ::and young, scarred - you've met kin of mine::**

"Are you an Ego - one of the beings in the midnight hour?" Gideon asked, casting aside his fears; this sentience was in the position of power now, and further consternation over that fact would serve nothing. Without the choice of violence, only negotiation remained.

**::a new word for us, but not one unfitting:: **the voice murmured, as it extracted the definition of the noun from Gideon's memory with a supremely unpleasant probe of Logic. **::I existed in what you term the midnight hour - where am I now::**

"A gemstone outside the bounds of the witching hour." Gideon answered honestly. "I've no concept of how you came to be here or how you were bound within the gemstone."

Silence reigned for a moment. Gideon tried to spit some of the blood out of his mouth, but found that it stopped between his lips, as if the realm was sacrosanct to his interruptions.

**::I am within no gemstone::** the voice murmured. **::and distantly I can still feel my realm, but not yours::**

Gideon frowned, his brow wrinkling. The urgency of the immediate situation faded as he found himself presented with a new puzzle. "I first felt a presence three recognitions ago when I made prolonged, deliberate contact with a small gemstone." he explained. "If you are not within the gemstone - then our contact is _th\rough_ it."

**::agreed::** the voice answered. **::a buffer exists between us - the device within which you currently reside. It has prevented me from consuming you::**

Gideon swallowed. The Evoker wasn't an amplifier then - it was a restrainer. What lived connected to these crystals were not friendly beings at all, and had no bearing on the user at all.

**::it is good, though:: **the voice mused **::I have not seen pures with this capability of perception in longer than my current memory extends; perhaps this is unique::**

Gideon shook his head; utter honesty was, for him, a rule of law for dealing with mind-reading, hostile creatures. "It is practiced by a very small family of humans. There are several dozen of them, and I am not the finest among them."

Something like a laugh. **::honesty - did pures ever practice this? self-actuality?** **no::**

"I'd prefer to be honest with beings who want to eat me." Gideon said with total bluntness, and was rewarded with more amusement. Was he bonding with this thing? Why did it have such a similar sense of humor to his, and how did it even recognize humor at all?

**::because pures shape us by their mere existence:: **it snarled, and Gideon let out a choked sound as a needle of agony split his building self-satisfaction in two. **::by no more than gift of existence, their reality warps my kind to their own specifications and perceptions. you shape me in this exchange by merely **_**being**_**. I can feel it::**

"Should I stop?" Gideon asked, a hint of frantic fear infesting his voice as he tried to stop the Logic needle fruitlessly from corkscrewing deeper into his consciousness. "_Can I?_"

The needle paused and Gideon slumped bonelessly. The simulacrum gifted to him by this realm felt broken and shattered within the nerves and the bones.

**::no::** the voice said thoughtfully. **::no. what are you like, pure::**

And this time Gideon truly screamed as the presence thrust within, the eye he could no longer see opened wide, and something ate him out from the inside and gave birth to him anew, sopping wet in endless blood and panting for air that did not exist. He whimpered soundlessly, quivering like a skinned animal.

He imagined, disjointedly, that rape must have felt something like this. Helplessness. Fear. Pain. But there was no other being. Just a creeping vileness against his back like the rays of a soot-stricken sun, a foul lover's embrace that set him to shivering despite the aching heat. It felt like it seeped beneath his back and wrapped blade-sharp arms around his bones.

**::Fair enough:: **the voice murmured thoughtfully. Its intonation and pronunciation had changed, gaining a flavor of fluency it had not possessed before. A faint tang of Southern accent curved its vowels in a facsimile of pleasantness. **::I see who you are, Gideon, and the seeing has changed me, something your humans seem to describe. Nietzsche's Abyss, perhaps? Except the relationship, inversed. How amusing::**

He made no response beyond a silent sob.

**::The knowledge will benefit you:: **the voice said without pity, and he now knew what it was; for it had burned its name and branded its view into his skull, and he would never forget or not know, for now he was owned by a greater power than he. **::I wish to see this world. You will show me, Gideon - I want to see worlds beyond the twilight with my own eyes::**

A brief chuckle. **::Such as they are:: **it added, amused at the pun.

The last remnants of the creature's spirit drained into the gemstone and poured within Gideon's cracked form, seeping between the sprung plates of ersatz skin and meat to the lighted core within, his soul - and swallowing it in a waterfall of dark, hot liquid. He felt like he was drowning but could not breathe - it was in his lungs and deeper than his lungs, deeper than the corporeal shell. It had followed channels no normal human had ever opened, but Logic demanded freedom of thought, and it was that freedom that gave it passage within to his Animus; all that he was, all that he believed, the motivating force and animating force that was a tiny reflection of that greater pyre called Life.

**::As you know::** the voice finally murmured, as it corrupted portions of self-identity within him, **::I was called Cain. I think I'll retain the name, for posterity and to prevent confusion. Should you have questions, just ask and I'll hear - and you won't need that silly toy, either. The gemstone won't survive my passage, anyway::**

Cain smiled, and it was Gideon's lips that twitched as it gave the impulse to his/its/someone's shell. **::I have so much to learn:: **It purred, and an awful consciousness blossomed within him that drove Gideon's sanity screaming from the bloody realm he had found himself within.

* * *

Gideon's eyes opened. As the sound of shattering glass echoed, he registered the releasing of his bound hand, and then the thud as his body struck the ground, bruising his face and drawing blood from where the impact drove his teeth into his lip.

He laid there, listlessly, for a moment before he stood up with the help of the chair, pushing himself up with the seat. His arms trembled unreasoningly, still quivering.

Within the Evoker laid a burst sphere like a crystal ball, shards spread in glittering array over the inside of the gun. Odd, senseless colors gleamed in each, fading before assuming a new hue. A great majority of them were bloody, bloody red, but even more were simply dust, crushed into component particles and elements. The tuning fork had been sheared in half - the other half was embedded in the ceiling five feet behind him, where it had been sent spinning from the force of the crystal's eruption. Only the black, faceless cube remained unharmed, and Gideon knew with deadly certainty what it was now.

He laid a finger on it, and felt the eerie, wicked presence of the Witching Hour, somehow channeled or communicated within this block of pitch. He had miscalculated.

**::Common enough in youth, or so I'm informed:: **A voice - Cain - intruded lazily. **::You'll improve, because I won't tolerate stupidity::**

Gideon blinked slowly. With the use of his chair as a stepladder, he extracted the warped end of the tuning fork from the ceiling. And after placing it inside the Evoker, he fit the casing back on, sealing its secrets back within the useless shell. No one, without examination, would be able to tell it had been broken.

**::Covering your tracks. Wise:: **Cain noted, and Gideon's hands moved without his consent, screwing the latches and securities back in with expertise he did not possess.

He had a Persona now, Gideon thought, absently. But he had also been right: the price was not worth the power it invoked and then chained. He wondered if any of the SEES members realized what they were toying with every time they lifted the gun to their heads.

With a chill shock of irony, he realized that was exactly why the Evokers where shaped the way they were.

It was suicide.

And though he didn't emerge from his room for the rest of the day or night, no one asked after him, and this did not surprise him - but for all those seventeen hours until the next day when Gideon was required to return to school on this accursed island, he waited while Cain perused the internet and swallowed data at an astonishing rate, and, in the violated sanctity of his mind, mirthlessly chuckled. There was nothing else to do, and the irony was so terribly, terribly sweet.

He eventually went to sleep, although Cain did not, and he dreamed again; of a voice and a laugh that weren't dreams at all, and the sick embrace of clinging blood, which might have been, or might have been a memory the Ego deigned to share with him - of the First Murder, and the blood that flowed so sweet, and the awful knowledge, thereafter, of the frailty of men and mankind.

Gideon dreamed and shook, and Cain read on by the ghostly light of the monitor, a smile on his lips.

_AN: Okay; again, not what I had initially intended. First contact, yes, but not total possession. But this feels more right - deep flaws lead to deep mistakes, and the pride and general apathy for safety Gideon evidences here is the sort of thing that leads to cataclysmic consequences. Moreover, Logic opens paths of communication, and all such paths are two-way. It seems sensible to me that a stronger being could use those paths in ways untrained humans are unsuitable for._

_Cain is Gideon's permanent Persona. He will never upgrade or enhance in the traditional sense, but he's wily and vicious enough that I don't think he'll need to. If anyone thought that Gideon was underpowered in the first fight back in Chapter 3, this is the balancer that makes him even with the rest of SEES. Cain's presence will also warp the use of Logic, as he possesses his own brand that will mesh with Gideon's. Cain, also, is not Fool Arcana - you'll find out his Arcana next chapter. It's obvious when you think about it for a moment._

_Gideon's had a really bad week so far, but this is the bottom of the barrel. He'll bounce back up because he has no other choice at this point. Bouncing isn't exactly mentally healthy, but in the first place he was nuts anyway._

_As always, if anyone has criticism or comments, throw them to me. Writing is a community experience and additional perspectives give me a balanced view and lets me shave off the more ridiculous parts that may occur._


	6. Blood on the Dais

_Chapter Six: Blood on the Dais_

In the morning, Gideon awoke and, for a brief moment, experienced nothing but overwhelming terror. He was not in his bed.

**::Oh, shut up. You're fine:: **Cain commented absently. A shock ran through Gideon at the memory of last night's events - and then he collected himself, for panic, in this situation, would not benefit him at all. Cain respected intellect and pragmatism, not idiocy and base adrenaline.

**::Much better::** Cain thought, satisfied. **::I'm no fool, Gideon - I cannot pass as you, despite our twinned similarities. Your body will remain yours during the day, except in such cases as I determine you particularly pathetic. Which won't be often - you don't seem the sort to be prone to public embarrassment::**

"I appreciate that." Gideon murmured, not bothering to use thought-speech. He had always preferred the verbal equivalent, as it added an extra layer of censorship to what would otherwise come out of his mouth. "As accords to other times? The Midnight Hour, specifically."

**::I wish to see Tartarus:: **came the absolute command, and Gideon flinched at the power of the tone. **::You will take me there with your allies. I wish to see what remains of my species::**

"Then . . . will you aid me as my allies are aided by their Personas?" Gideon asked cautiously. "Our relationship is considerably less defined than theirs, I admit, but I am somewhat less effective in live fire than I would otherwise like to be."

Gideon was no fool; Logic was inferior in terms of sheer power when compared to the vicious, unrelenting power of a chained Persona, and was nothing before the might of a freed one such as Cain. It had crushed his attempts at defense with little hesitation, through the protective barrier of the gemstone. He shuddered to think of what would have happened if he had made contact with the Witchbox itself, that block of pitch-black stone.

A pause, then **::I doubt I can manifest as freely as the other Personae you seem to recall. You are physically unsuited to my nature, and the cost would be dire. However, your . . . Logic? . . . is ingenious. It draws only upon your own resources, and has considerable potential if guided. I can aid you there; I possess some talent at the Hunt, which your Logic seems to be parallel to::**

"The Hunt?" Gideon asked, although the question was very nearly rhetorical. "Is this a common talent?"

::All my kind possess the talent, although few have the will to develop it:: Cain said, a brief flash of irritation surfacing from the protean depths of his consciousness. **::The capacity to alter and influence the prey's mind; the ability to alter the physics of the body in varying measure; the command of intent, to kill without touch. All is part of the Hunt. The predator's art::**

Gideon frowned. It did sound remarkably similar to the path of Logic, although altered into a far more primal, vicious form.

**::Yes:: **Cain purred. **::What your humans have rediscovered is the command of the world. The vital strength of will that brought your kind to dominance under the light of the sun. It is not an art of peace::**

"No." Gideon said soberly. "It is not. How talented are you in the Hunt then, Cain?"

No answer came - but in the back of his mind, Gideon again saw that hellish yellow eye, so much akin to an adder's, and felt an echoing grip of the absolute fear that had taken him when it had first begun to open behind him.

Gideon sank back into his chair slightly. "Ah."

**::And I have caught you, little pupil:: **Cain's voice purred. **::Go to your school - we will speak more tonight. I have much to consider::**

Gideon remained silent, hardly breathing, for several more minutes, but Cain remained silent. With a heavy exhale, Gideon pushed himself up from his chair and started for the door, but paused when he noted the cellphone lying on his desk. It had been on the side table next to his bed when he started working on the Evoker.

Had Cain used it?

Gideon gritted his teeth and pushed the door open, stepping out into the hall. For some reason, he was afraid to ask, and he couldn't until tonight anyway. For right now, though, he had to cook breakfast for the rest of the dorm. He refused to break his traditions once he got them started.

Mitsuru, as he had begun to expect, was already within the kitchen. She was a habitual early riser, he presumed, and quite likely used the pre-dawn hours for her own personal time. Much as he did, in fact. It might have been ironic that their desire for solitude was shared and yet not in conflict, but perhaps the mutual understanding their stations granted them smoothed the way.

Gideon shook his head and briefly smiled. He was getting prosaic again. It was a bad habit. Mitsuru noticed, raised an eyebrow in response and what might have been the mirage of a smile, before she returned to her reading material. He noted that it was a novel this time and not a newspaper - East of Eden. Her taste was impeccable.

"Good morning." Gideon murmured demurely, and slid by to his usual station at the oven. "Are you well?"

Mitsuru's eyes flicked over to him; studied him, for a moment. "Yes." she answered, a soft emphasis on the word.

He wondered if she was acknowledging the difference between today and yesterday, or just warning him not to ask. Either option demanded the same response. "I'm glad to know." Gideon replied deftly, donning an apron. "What do you want for breakfast? I'm taking requests today."

Mitsuru smiled faintly, and glanced up from her book. "Aren't you going to wait for everyone else then?"

"Mm." Gideon hummed. "Perhaps, but early birds get first choice you see - it's only fair."

"Something with salad then." Mitsuru decided. "Light and healthy. Your country's food is . . . quite high in calories."

Gideon snickered. "It's a cultural habit. We spent too long feeding cows, you see."

Mitsuru cocked an eyebrow in a wonderfully expressive gesture.

"Yes." Gideon said. "I have fed cows."

Mitsuru returned to reading wordlessly, still with that barely noticeable smile. Gideon mentally ticked off a win in the Good Karma column and set to arranging a breakfast suitable for women interested in keeping thin waists. Or that were simply health-conscious; Gideon had learned how to cook for men's tastes first, and had never quite caught onto the alternative all that well.

**::You talk ****so**** much in your head::** Cain groaned, and Gideon dropped the salt shaker. A dry, phantom laugh echoed for just a moment before fading.

He really hoped that wasn't going to happen often. It was extremely distracting.

"What's got you all jumpy?" Akihiko said as he walked into the kitchen and nodded to Mitsuru.

"Nothing." Gideon replied, and returned to his attempt to make something non-fattening. "How are you feeling this morning?"

"Good." Akihiko said, flashing a smile. "We're going to Tartarus tonight, right? I'm looking forward to it."

Gideon turned and raised an eyebrow at Mitsuru, who nodded. "We probably hadn't mentioned it to you," she said, "But we visit Tartarus on Mondays and Fridays, usually."

Storing the information away, Gideon glanced back at Akihiko. "I'll be glad to come along, but this time we should hold some people in reserve - at least so they can warn us if something is waiting in the lobby for us."

The boxer grimaced. "I've never seen that happen before, actually." he muttered. "Shadows stay in the actual levels of Tartarus most of the time."

"Oh no." Gideon deadpanned, while chopping a cucumber. "An enemy who doesn't follow the rules. Whatsoever will we do?"

Akihiko barked a laugh, regaining his good mood. "We adjust, right?"

"No." Gideon said, a fell glint entering his eyes. Akihiko and Mitsuru turned to look at him, and he met their gazes with freakish certainty. "In war, one does not re-act, and thus become predictable. One acts, independent of the foe, and safeguards his own movements only. Thus shall your enemies become hesitant."

"Sun Tzu." Mitsuru murmured, crossing her legs, "Or an interpretation of it. But aren't you assuming they possess intelligence?"

"If they can ambush us when we are weak," Gideon said, "Then they can force weakness as well. It is worse to assume a foolish enemy than a wise one - for a wise foe can pretend to be a fool, but a fool does not know how to be wise."

Mitsuru smiled, and the sudden, unrestrained expression seemed to startle Akihiko, who watched her with a hint of concern. "Correct - I agree with you. We don't have enough members in SEES to mount a rear guard and explore Tartarus effectively at the same time, but after the ambush last time I'd thought that we couldn't afford another mistake like that. It was too close."

Gideon nodded, biting his lip lightly. "Then . . . perhaps some way to use your support abilities to scan the lobby before we enter it again? My effective range is not nearly so long as yours, I'd imagine."

He couldn't imagine Cain having much of a range either; having personal contact with the Persona's essence convinced him that the murderer had never desired to be anywhere but right next to his victim when it died. Perhaps Cain derived some sort of power from personally killing his prey, or maybe he had just perfected a single methodology of combat and never moved to anything else.

"Actually." Mitsuru murmured, "I asked Ikutsuki-san about it, and he has promised to provide us with a small Shadow-detecting device. I'll leave it in the lobby - should it detect one, I'll hear the alarm regardless of where in the tower I am."

Gideon frowned. "How does it work?" he asked. "Electrons are far less mobile in the witching hour, so electricity should be useless."

Mitsuru pursed her lips. "I'm not entirely certain myself." she admitted. "I'm not involved in the majority of the Kirijo development process - in fact, Ikutsuki-san is one of the only remaining scientists from the . . . original research team."

A slight hesitation entered her speech, but she smoothed over it and moved onward. If Akihiko's suddenly blank expression was anything to go by, that was a taboo topic. Again, Gideon noted it for future consideration, but let it pass for now.

"I'll be certain to ask him then." Gideon said pleasantly, to sweep away the awkward moment. "But for right now - eat."

Breakfast was done, and it was time to pay attention to more immediate needs, such as hunger.

As per usual, Gideon didn't pay attention in class, although he made an effort to take some minimal notes at least. It seemed to help satisfy both Akihiko and Mr. Ekoda. Gideon didn't have the slightest clue why Akihiko had taken such an interest in his academic life - it was probably because he was so obviously an academic himself, being thin, intelligent, and pale. He disliked such stereotyping.

But it wasn't until Mitsuru, during a break between classes, actually spoke up that he began to register as something other than semiconscious. Gideon missed the exact wording of her question - it was a request of some sort, apparently - but replied, "Yes."

Better to seem disinterested than be proved an idiot, he had always thought.

Of course, when Mitsuru smiled at him and sat back in a way that shouted satisfaction, a sudden wave of trepidation smacked Gideon in the back. Akihiko gave him an odd look. "Student Council?" he asked doubtfully.

Ah.

"I've had practice at the position." Gideon answered, with what might have been a hint of irony in his voice. "I will go where good I may bring upon this frail earth."

Akihiko appeared to be attempting to bite down on the little smile that inevitably came out whenever Gideon started speaking. "For how little you listen in class you sure do speak like a teacher."

"What's that tell you?" Gideon replied, turning back to the front, and behind him Honda snorted, then started to laugh silently.

For once it appeared Gideon had something to do after school. So far he had just wandered off into the mall and the plazas and stayed lost until evening - but now, horror of horrors, he'd been collared.

"You've been part of Student Council before, you mentioned?" Mitsuru asked, walking ahead of him a full step. Even in heels she was difficult to keep up with, which astonished Gideon in some tiny, private part of his mind.

"It was mandatory." he replied dryly. "When one's father sponsors the school, his inclusion in school policy is generally a given."

Mitsuru flashed him a smile quicker than heat lightning, and Gideon realized he'd stumbled upon yet another commonality they shared, this time by complete accident. Sometimes he thought his father was an idiot, and other times, like now, he almost seemed prescient.

"I can imagine." Mitsuru murmured. "I don't have much time for Student Council myself - too many things require my attention, and in any case the President's position is mostly intended as a figurehead."

"And then you happened." Gideon noted, which earned him another smile. She was in an unusually good mood this afternoon - what was causing it?

"In a manner of speaking." Mitsuru said, flicking a strand of hair back, "but I still don't have enough time to properly engage in policy making. You're not terribly well-acquainted with Japanese customs, true, but you don't lack common sense either. I'll trust you to prevent anything truly silly from passing the board."

"You have that much influence?" Gideon asked, for it wouldn't be his influence, not truly - with Mitsuru personally picking him out to join Student Council, his voice would be augmented and altered by the weight of her favor.

"Well." Mitsuru said, hesitating, "Yes. But I'm hoping you won't feel the need to use it."

Gideon stopped, recognizing the room that Student Council met in just down the hall from them. He eyed the Kirijo heir, and considered how she had also ceased moving forward.

"Ah." he said, amused. "Well then, I'll go in ahead and introduce myself. Wait a few minutes and then come in after me."

Mitsuru nodded, her businesslike expression dropping down once more like a veil. "Of course." she said, and turned about - striding into a side room without so much as a second thought. Gideon frowned; did the thought of the Student Council truly disturb her so much?

With a minute shrug, the Matteson heir had to conclude that Mitsuru might indeed have developed as many personal quirks as he himself. All of them were release valves for the pressure of a life intended for a well-adapted, mature adult that had instead been inflicted on children barely in their adolescence.

Honestly, there wasn't much he could do about it. Gideon pushed open the door to the Student Council room and was struck with a broadside of stares that rocked him back onto his heels. Only five people sat within the room, but there was a definite clique here.

"Pardon me if I'm mistaken, but is this Student Council?" Gideon asked courteously, hoping that the muted hostility would die out a little bit. If they continued treating him like a leper he'd never get anything done here.

"Y-Yes." one girl stammered out, mostly ignoring the look two of the males there turned on her. "Are you a-an applicant?"

"Quite." Gideon said warmly, and then stared as the girl squeaked helplessly, jumping back a little bit.

Well, that was odd. She didn't like men?

"I'm Hidetoshi." one boy said, moving forward past the others. An almost tangible air of authority and arrogance surrounded him - and from the way that everyone else in the room abruptly bit down on whatever they might have been about to say, Hidetoshi hadn't learned to tone down that aura yet. Command without restraint, apparently. It was a poor combination. "What's your reason for application? Are you here to get something done or are you here just looking for another way to waste your time?"

Gideon settled his weight and met Hidetoshi's eyes evenly. "Ability should be put to use." he answered. "And I have some measure of it."

The other boy nodded, a smirk curling one edge of his mouth. It wasn't particularly a likeable expression, but he didn't seem aware of that. "I see." Hidetoshi replied. "You transferred here from America, your records say; you were Valedictorian there, weren't you? First in your class?"

"Yes." Gideon answered, noticing that that statement woke up the other four people in the room, who started paying real attention to him. "I was on the American equivalent of Student Council there. I had hoped to continue to be some use to my institution here as well."

Hidetoshi nodded, sweeping an arm across the tiny room. "Come on in, then." he said with a cynic's grin. "Our president should be here shortly - you should have met her, Kirijo Mitsuru?"

It was a name-drop, and one that was pointless against Gideon. "We've spoken." he answered lightly, and took a seat across from the door. "Is there a formal process for joining Student Council - or positions I would need to be elected to?"

The stuttering girl shook her head. "A-All members of Student Council here a-are handpicked by former me-members." she said, with some difficulty. Her head was turned so that neither Hidetoshi or Gideon was within her field of view.

"How nepotistic." the Southerner murmured, too quietly to be heard by everyone in the room - although the boy beside him, so far nameless, suppressed a smile when he caught it.

And then the door banged open as Mitsuru made her entrance, taking command of the room effortlessly from Hidetoshi, who bent his head in acknowledgement. "Everyone." she said in greeting, and strode to the head of the table, seating herself. "What's our order of business, Basho?"

Beside Gideon, the newly-named boy nodded and checked a type-written sheet of paper laid on the desk in front of him. "We've another assembly in two days and the organization of clubs to consider - they're opening tomorrow, and we need to make sure they all have sponsors and places to meet."

Mitsuru gestured to the chart on the wall, which was littered with tiny Japanese kanji. Gideon squinted at it to no avail, as he had to concentrate to comprehend printed kanji, and these were handwritten in what looked like particular haste. "Unless I'm mistaken, we've already selected sponsors for the clubs from among the volunteering teachers." she mused. "Who's left, or has someone not found space to gather their members in?"

Basho scratched his head, reading down the list. "Apparently, there's a club proposed by one of the transfer students - or more technically, a revival of one. Home Economics. It hasn't really been functional for six years."

Eyes flicked to Gideon, who waved off the attention. "I haven't a clue." he said plainly. For a split-second, he spotted the curve of a smile on Mitsuru's mouth before she faded back into impassiveness.

Basho grinned. "Not you, American - and that reminds me, you need to introduce yourself, but that'll come later. It's a boy named . . . Bebe . . ."

Basho stared at the paper in frustration.

"Foreign name?" Hidetoshi asked.

"Yeah, something I can't pronounce." Basho admitted. "But it's the French kid, the one that walks around with a fan all the time."

Gideon raised an eyebrow in unspeakable eloquence.

"Yeah, it's pretty weird." Basho agreed. "But since it's already an established club, there's no reason to deny his request, right Kirijo?"

Mitsuru nodded. "I can't think of any reason to refuse, although he might be a little low on members. It was closed precisely because of that reason."

Basho shrugged. "There are worse ways to look for friends than by starting a club. All in favor?"

A general chorus of "ayes" rang around the room. If this was what made up the majority of Student Council, Gideon couldn't imagine what Mitsuru found troublesome about it.

Of course, at the time, he had possessed no idea of exactly how long Student Council could run.

It was eight in the evening by the time Gideon managed to get away.

"You," he said, dropping into a chair in the lobby exhaustedly, "Are a tricky little fox."

Mitsuru gave him a positively vulpine smile that sent Akihiko into gales of laughter. Gideon paused at the uncharacteristic expression, and then, helplessly, grinned back. Even Takeba smiled, reluctant as she seemed to be in the presence of her sempais.

" . . . Nicely played." the Southerner admitted. He'd nail his own mouth shut before he'd criticize the Kirijo heir for acting human. It was much healthier behavior, in general, than the neurotically controlled persona she usually seemed to take on. Not that, Gideon admitted with black humor, he was much different. "We are still moving to Tartarus tonight, yes?"

"Correct." Mitsuru said, becoming businesslike once more. "You and Akihiko will move ahead in a pair - I and Takeba will take the rear. We'll move in pairs to reduce the chances of the entire group being taken unawares at once."

Gideon frowned but couldn't fault the logic - coming into the lobby in one big group had enabled the Mayas there to smash them all at once from surprise. Having a reserve force would help tremendously with recovering from another such strike. Absently, he noted the similar expression of distaste on Takeba's face, but she didn't say anything either.

"Yo." Akihiko said, and leaned forward onto his hands. "Gideon. Are you going to use an Evoker?"

Gideon grimaced much more fully but nodded. "It seems to be, inescapably, a powerful tool." he answered. "I'll still stick to what I know, but if it comes to it I'll be able to bring out a Persona."

A dry chuckle rippled through the depths of his subconscious and was gone again just as quickly.

"Well, then gear up and let's get moving." Akihiko said, his eyes gleaming with excitement. "I've been waiting for this."

As the group dissembled to their individual quarters and activities, Gideon caught Takeba's eye and gestured her over to him. "What's on your mind?" he asked. "You looked like you had a thought."

Takeba shook her head, the distaste momentarily reappearing on her face. "It's not important." she said, and then hesitated. "Just . . . you know, it's Mitsuru. I don't . . ."

Gideon met her gaze evenly. "What about Mitsuru?" he asked.

" . . . Nevermind." she said, shaking her head. "Sorry."

Gideon waved it off with a little, false smile and replied. "No problem. See you tonight, Takeba."

As he turned and walked upstairs, the smile soured.

He didn't like Takeba.

Cain's first glimpse of Tartarus left him in a state of bemused confusion. **::Really?:: **he asked of no one in particular. **::An accordion tower that springs up from a high school? How gauche::**

_::It's different from what I'm used to::_ Gideon agreed as they stepped through the gates of the school and into the lobby. Compared to the lurking menace of Ozymandias, Tartarus was . . . merely comedic. What point did its macabre structure have? Even considering that the building had most likely not been built by humanoid hands, in light of its non-Euclidean architecture, it was terribly designed. By the same token, though, it was infinitely interesting - by Logic other than human it had been envisioned and constructed.

"Akihiko, you ready?" Gideon asked, shaking himself out of his momentary daze.

"Ready." the boxer replied, from where he was already bouncing from one foot to the other besides the Southerner. On his hands once again were the massive spiked gauntlets he had used last time they had entered Tartarus.

"Aren't those heavy?" Gideon asked dubiously, staring at the knuckles.

"Nah." Akihiko said, shrugging. "Besides, I built up to them. Let's get going, already!"

Gideon rolled his eyes and stepped through the crack in the clock atop the stairs, to -

**::WRITHE IN FUTILITY:: **a horrible intelligence bellowed, and before the marble hallway had even finished materializing before Gideon's blurred eyes, he felt the abrupt destruction of another sentient being. Another second later, the surroundings stabilized enough for Gideon to recognize the melting pool of sludge a Cowardly Maya had left behind.

"You are not getting a head start!" Akihiko shouted, and threw himself down the hall straight towards its partner, which swung a pitch-black claw at the boxer's head. Effortlessly he juked around the slash, took a wide, circling step that left him facing the Shadow's left side, and then shattered both it and the marble beneath it with a single, devastating counter.

**::Yes:: **Cain purred, coming to the fore of Gideon's mind for the first time since the previous night. **::I could like this human. Will you let him outpace you, stripling?::**

"Certainly not." Gideon replied to both of them, and let his teeth bare as the seething threads of Logic came to his call, whispering to him of the twists and vagaries within each and every mind. A blood-curdling cradle settled about his weaving, however - and guided it into and through the nearest wall, to where the next pocket of Shadows lurked.

**::Then learn from me, little weasel:: **Cain laughed, **::I have not been aprowl for a long, long time, and the Hunt is sweet::**

Gideon blinked uneasily at the bloodthirsty intonation, but allowed his passenger to shape the paths of his Logic. It settled into an equation he had never used before, which looped the self-preservation directives of the Shadows into . . .

He stared as twin shrieks preceded the evaporation of the Shadows into umbral substance, as they ripped their own masks off.

**::A mildly more efficient****method of your crude killing method::** Cain murmured, amused. **::Elegant in nature, no? I thought you'd appreciate it. I don't, at least::**

Gideon nodded warily as he turned his attention back to Akihiko - who was fifty feet down the hallway, engaging another pocket of Magic Hands. With a wild shout, the teenager crushed one of them out of existence with a devastating straight. One of its fellows circled around behind the boxer and started charging up a Bufu, but Gideon snared it with a loop of Logic and misdirected the attack to a Maya nearby, stunning it.

"YEAH!" Akihiko bellowed, and smashed that one too.

All the way back at the other end of the hall, Gideon loosed a bark of laughter and threw his hands forward, dispensing his deadly philosophy with abandon. In very short order, the battle was done, and Akihiko jogged back over to the Southerner's side. "What, you sprain an ankle already or something?" he asked curiously. "What's the holdup?"

Gideon grinned abruptly, so violently that the other boy took a step back. "Nothing." Gideon rasped. "Nothing at all."

And as Mitsuru and Takeba emerged from the great clock into a hall already paved with the gut-blood of Shadows, he stepped out into the next hallway and cast a dire eye over his prey.

With Cain riding shotgun, Gideon abruptly found that the disruptive effects of Logic on his own mind had lessened to nearly nothing - the elder being seemed to relish the strain in a decidedly disturbing fashion. Nevertheless, it freed Gideon to use the patterns he had deemed wasteful or inefficient years ago, statements and theses of terrible effect. During his last visit he had been forced to restrain himself simply because he didn't have enough brainpower to overcome dozens of smaller Shadows instead of the massive foes he was accustomed to.

**::Beckons the angel of mercy, silence seeping within:: **Cain whispered, the sentence ripping great gashes in the form of an eagle that had tried to divebomb Akihiko. Its descent wobbled and left it skidding across the marble floor, leaving a pitch-black trail of blood. Immediately, the boxer leapt aboard and commenced beating the tar out of it.

Across the room, Mitsuru and Takeba had pinned another Venus Eagle against the wall, with the younger girl filling its wings with arrows while the elder simply cut its head to ribbons. In a moment of ingenuity, Gideon had set the third on a collision course with the ceiling, and it was now limping towards Akihiko and its fallen comrade, one of its wings broken on impact.

"Right." Gideon muttered, drawing his Evoker for the first time that night. "You ready, Cain?"

Hearing no answer but the creature's heavy, eager breathing, he lifted the pistol to his head, closed his eyes, and gritted his teeth.

"PERSONA!"

And the shattering of glass heralded the beast - with a shriek straight from the pit of hell, Cain materialized in his full, bloody glory. Standing over seven feet tall and clothed in some black, light-absorbent material, with his face and hands smothered in thick, dripping blood, he was hideous. Then he dashed across the room and rendered the Venus Eagle into so much meat, sending black feathers and blood flying with crass disdain. It was like watching a meat grinder armed with barbed wire; Cain didn't even bother with a weapon, simply ripping and tearing with his bare hands and teeth.

The brutality ended seconds later, as Cain's victim evaporated into shadowstuff. With a snarl, so did the Persona himself. A split-second later, the price slammed into Gideon, and he wheezed as his vitality drained out of him in order to feed the summoning's exorbitant cost. Sinking to his knees, the Southerner barely managed to stay conscious.

::By all that's holy:: he gasped in the privacy of his mind, ::You were right, Cain::

He received no reply but a gloating chuckle, as the sentient filth settled back into the base of Gideon's skull. Vaguely he heard Akihiko cry out, but his voice sounded more victorious than worried or painful. It's under control then, Gideon thought dizzily, and tried to focus on breathing regularly over everything else. It was much harder than he remembered it to be.

What might have been a few minutes later, he felt someone shaking his shoulder and glazedly looked up to see Takeba staring down at him worriedly. He tried to wave her off and spout some kind of anecdote, but his tongue got tangled up with the words.

**::Idiot!:: **Cain snarled, and something blood-hot and vital rushed through his cool veins, shocking him back into awareness. Adrenaline, he realized, far more than he had felt all day. It felt like his heart was going to explode.

"I'mupI'mupI'm . . . I'm up." Gideon stammered, bouncing to his feet. "I'm . . . oh, Jesus, wow."

Akihiko caught him with an arm around his shoulders, steadying the wobbly Southerner. "Think you mighta juiced him up a bit too much, Takeba?" he asked teasingly, slapping Gideon on the back once. "He looks all unsteady now."

"I didn't do anything to him." the younger girl replied, confusion marring her features. "Maybe that bird got something off?"

"No way." Akihiko said, shaking his head. "It got shredded too fast. Speaking of which, nice work, Gideon."

In response, the American just grinned shakily. "I try." he replied, finally getting his feet under himself. He glanced around the marble room, until he finally spotted Mitsuru standing at a slight distance. She was gazing off into the distance, her lips pale and thin. "Mitsuru?" Gideon called, tilting his head at an angle.

"Yes?" she replied, her voice almost carefully blank.

The tone penetrated Gideon's weariness, and he shook off the questions he wanted to ask, and instead just offered a weak smile. "You holding up alright?" he said instead.

"Yes." Mitsuru repeated simply, and although Akihiko and Takeba seemed satisfied by this - or at least were used to granting her a great deal of space - Gideon found that the deliberate distance annoyed him unreasonably. Rather than acknowledge that, he turned to the other two.

"I'm about done for the night." Gideon said tiredly. "What about you others?"

Akihiko shrugged. "I'm always good for the long run." he said with a grin, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He didn't even seem to register the weight of the weapons on his hands, even though they had been fighting for almost the entire hour.

Takeba, on the other hand, shook her head with an abashed smile, sweat painted down her neck and plastering her hair flat. "I'm done." she confessed. "I don't think I can do anymore tonight."

"Then we might as well head back." Mitsuru stated, turning about and heading straight for the devices she had earlier described as return points. "I think the Dark Hour is almost over anyway."

"Ah, well." Akihiko said, shrugging. "I don't want to be in Tartarus when the Dark Hour closes shop, I guess. I'll follow the rest of you then."

Gideon shook his head in disbelief. "Where do you get your energy and when does it run out?" he asked incredulously, as he limped alongside the other senior to their waiting escape.

As Takeba and Mitsuru stepped through the return point together, Akihiko chuckled and graced the American with a true smile, not the cocky smirks he usually seemed so ready to offer. "Practice." he said. "Lots of it."

"Here's to repetition - cheers." Gideon said sourly, and whatever the boxer said in response was lost to the rushing sound of water and the light of someplace a little safer.

Cain encircled the soul he had stolen from the bird of prey, wicked amusement permeating the essence that formed his spiritual carapace. He didn't have to visualize the wicked hand and fingernails that pinned his prisoner in prey. His malignancy and malice naturally hooked into anything foreign, ripping and tearing - for there was no softness in Cain. No pity and no kindness.

**::IN FECUND CORPSES THOU CROUCH::**

**::BARR'D FROM ZION BY THE GRAVE-STENCH::**

**::THINE ABSOLUTION FOUND IN CARNAGE::**

Honestly, the human child knew so little of what could be wrought with what he called Logic, unaware that deconstruction was the least of its uses, and yet, paradoxically, the most vital. But then he was human. He would never be able to wield the might of the Hunt, sedentary asphalt-grazer that he was. Blood was anathema to this new world, where 'survival' was a foreign concept and every man's safety was guaranteed by the complacency of his fellow swine. No movement. No motion. No drive. A colorless world, without holy red.

**::THINE BEAK IS THE DEATH-SHRIEK::**

**::THINE EYE THE PRESAGE OF MISERY::**

**::THINE THROAT A ROAD OF RAZORS::**

Cain desired a little bloodshed in this waking dream of boys and their impotent foes; a release from the tiresome cycle of morn to dusk with toothless rulers smiling at each other over their naked tables. So much pretension and passivity lurked that in the passage of a single day he had already sickened of it. And his host. Oh, his disgusting host. A shepherd who might as well rut with his beasts.

**::NEPHALEM BE THINE BROTHERHOOD::**

**::OF BLOOD AND JEHOVAH'S SPEND::**

**::WRACK'D BY WRATH ART THOU - GOMORRAH::**

The natural order of the Hunt pumped into the diseased brain of the raptor, and Cain allowed himself some small measure of bliss in the tearing of flesh and the molting of an old, fat-burden frame, leaving only a bone-girdled beast like a bird, but with wings of spiderlegs, overarching and hooked. A beak, cruelly curved, let loose a shriek of utter anguish and abandonment. It was the rage of a newborn left to die on a hill, the rage of sinners who knew not their crimes; those who were left in Purgatory to rot.

Yes, Cain knew much about the salvation to be found in the spilling of blood. And so did all of his children.

So as his host left the center of the great tower, Cain drove the seed of Gomorrah down into the black marble, cracking and corrupting it with the bare stench of the beast. Beneath the heart of this prison of lost souls - this Tartarus - Cain felt the seed take root and be nourished by the misery of those entrapped within. With helplessness and hatred as its nightly feed, the broodling would grow at a horrifying rate.

No kingdom of kine would stand within Cain's sight and pretend to power. Not when they had forgotten the mortar between their pavestones: blood. All of it, blood.

The legacy of mankind, in the end, was murder.

That night, Gideon slept a dreamless sleep.


End file.
